Reconciling Efficiency and Equity: A Global Challenge for Competition Law?

Due to the growing influence of economics and economists in competition law and policy discourse and the internationalization of antitrust, the equity versus efficiency trade-off debate has played a defining role in the transformation of the dominant paradigm governing competition law enforcement since at least the 1970s. The debate remains crucial today as issues of economic inequality and its interaction with efficiency become of central concern to policy and decision-makers in competition law, as well as in other spheres of public policy. Despite their central role in the grammar of competition law on the global plane, the intellectual underpinnings of the interactions between 'equity' and 'efficiency' in the context of competition law have never been examined in-depth. This book aims precisely to fill this gap by discussing new approaches in understanding the role of efficiency and equity concerns in competition law.

Damien Gerard serves as a case handler in the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission and is an academic affiliated with the University of Louvain and the College of Europe, where he also heads the Global Competition Law Center (GCLC).

Ioannis Lianos holds the chair of global competition law and policy at University College London and Director of the Centre for Law, Economics and Society at the University College London. He is also the chief researcher of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development.