A Tiger Without Teeth? Regulation of Administrative Monopoly Under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law

We identify in this paper the sources and types of administrative monopoly and the possible harms that administrative monopoly causes to the Chinese economy in its current institutional environment. We review the arguments for and against the inclusion of provisions on administrative monopoly in the ambit of the Anti-Monopoly Law and explain the weaknesses of such provisions. After analyzing the clauses against administrative monopoly in some countries?? antitrust laws and two recent litigation cases on administrative monopoly in China, we detail the challenges in practicing anti-administrative monopoly law and provide a number of suggestions as to how the law and its enforcement can be improved.     

Abuse of Market Dominance Under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: The Case of Tetra Pak

Review of Industrial Organization - In this paper, we analyze a recent antitrust case of abuse of dominance that was decided by a Chinese administrative enforcement agency under China’s...     

China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: What is the Welfare Standard?

China??s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) sets forth the country??s antitrust enforcement policies. We investigate the welfare standard that the AML seeks to maximize by examining both its stated language and, via revealed preference, the antitrust actions taken by the Anti-Monopoly Enforcement Authority.     

Abuse of Market Dominance Under China’s 2007 Anti-monopoly Law: A Preliminary Assessment

In this article we introduce the abuse of dominance provisions in China??s Anti-monopoly Law (AML) that was enacted in 2007, and we put this in context by briefly describing the laws on the abuse of dominance that existed before the AML, and their relationship with the provisions in the AML. We then discuss the interpretation and enforcement of the AML??s abuse of dominance provisions, on the one hand generally in the context of China??s new market competition environment and its political-legal system, and on the other hand specifically through a consideration of some recent antitrust cases on the abuse of market dominance. Finally, we offer a preliminary appraisal of the law and its enforcement.     

China’s Antimonopoly Law 2008: An Overview

This article outlines the economic, legal, and political background, general features, main provisions, and enforcement mechanisms of China??s Antimonopoly Law 2008 and describes some early developments in its application.     

China’s Textile Industry International Competitive Advantage and Policy Suggestion

Textile industry has long been a pillar to China’s economy thanks to its advantage in factor endowment and market scale. Trade volume of textile sector has increased by 27.11 times during the past 25 years (from the Reform and Opening). In 2005, textile export took up 15.4% of China’s total export and 24.4% of the world’s total export in textile, and the production and export of Chinese textile products are both the largest in the world. Nonetheless, China’s textile industry is facing va…     

Do Court Decisions Drive the Federal Trade Commission’s Enforcement Policy on Merger Settlements?

Mergers are generally conglomerate in nature with only minor (if any) horizontal overlaps. Under U.S. law, an enforcement agency may challenge any anticompetitive aspect of the merger and the consequent delay associated with litigation would impose costs on the firm. These costs may give the enforcement agency “leverage” to extract a settlement even when the firm would prevail in court. This paper explores whether the FTC’s decisions to challenge transactions approximate the case law. We find that the representative enforcement regimes of the FTC and the courts are remarkably similar, although the FTC credits efficiencies, while courts consider buyer sophistication as a mitigating factor.     

China’s Confidence

With the spread of the global financial turmoil, China is under growing tension from its large population, limited resource, environment problems, and losing its competitive edge in the world as exports are being driven down by shrinking demand abroad as well as higher costs. Despite challenges, China still has a great potential to develop its domestic demand and a solid financial system. Under such circumstance, we should enhance confidence. It is imperative for us to perceive favorable conditions and positive factors for acting against the negative outside environment and promoting development in a scientific way.     

The 1968 Merger Guidelines: Editor’s Introduction

This portion of the Review celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Department of Justice Merger Guidelines. We feature articles from Donald Baker, Gregory Werden, Kenneth Elzinga and Vandy Howell, and Peter Carstensen.     

Donald Turner’s Merger Guidelines as an Antitrust Watershed

The idea of agency-issued guidelines as an effective enforcement tool was novel indeed when Professor Donald F. Turner unveiled it as a priority upon being nominated to be head the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in 1965. This chapter reviews how Turner and we who were on his team worked to create the Merger Guidelines that were issued on his last day in office in May 1968. It also discusses how Turner’s novel merger guidelines idea has since been widely used in United States and globally.     

Incentive Complementarity in China’s Rural Enterprises

Complementarity between incentive instruments is a central theme of theoretical research in industrial organization. However, despite its importance, empirical evidence on the existence of complementarities is limited. We identify complementarities between incentive mechanisms using a dataset on rural firms in China. Using a panel regression framework, we confirm that significant complementarities exist in terms of the impact of incentive instruments on the performance of firms. In order to evaluate the robustness of our results we account for unobserved differences in firm quality using fixed effects and instrumental variables regressions. Support for the complementarity hypothesis is found after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity.     

New Wine into Old Wineskins: Recent Developments in China’s Competition Policy Against Monopolistic/Collusive Agreements

China??s anti-monopoly law contains comprehensive legal rules against monopolistic/collusive agreements. However, the legal standards for defining monopolistic agreements and the applicability of exemption and leniency programs need to be further clarified. Moreover, several coordination problems caused by the special organizational features of China??s antitrust institutions need to be addressed carefully. The Chinese antitrust authorities therefore face tremendous challenges in enforcement given both the intrinsic complications of monopolistic conduct and the existence of some inadequacies in the existing competition policy regime.     

Procuring Flexibility to Support Germany’s Renewables: Policy Options

To continue balancing supply and demand for power is a growing challenge on Germany’s path to producing 80?% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050. Large-scale investment into a range of technologies will be required to provide the flexibility necessary for balancing. This paper introduces a simple analytical framework to evaluate the German legislator’s numerous efforts to address this challenge. It then proceeds to make two proposals as to how flexibility can be sourced more cheaply. Priority should be given to measures that enable the existing power markets to generate stronger rewards for flexibility. We thus call for financial incentives for variable electricity tariffs to elicit more consumer response and for investment subsidies instead of feed-in tariffs for more demand-oriented renewable power generation. If additional explicit incentives for flexibility are necessary, they can be provided through a market for flexibility.     

China’s business system and its future trajectory

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - We present a sketch of the existing Chinese business system and discuss what we see as the main challenges in its future evolution. We argue that China will...     

China’s business network structure during institutional transitions

This study adopted a structural approach to examine the formation and characteristics of Chinese business networks via interlocking directorates during a stage in China’s institutional transitions. Analyses of the network structures of 949 listed companies revealed that: (1) Chinese business networks were smaller in scale and lower in density than their Western counterparts; (2) no nationwide network with a dominant center existed; (3) interlock occurred mainly in the form of smaller business groups which tended to be regionally fragmented; (4) ties were more prevalent among industrial peers than with financial institutions; and (5) government ownership was predominant. These findings therefore deepen our understanding about the pattern and extent of business interlock in China. Not only do these findings provide substantive implications to the notion and dimensionality of guanxi, but they also offer inspiration to managers and policy makers by illuminating key characteristics of network structure. Laying these foundations shall pave the way for future research in the structure of Chinese business networks.

On Relative Advantage of China‘’‘’s Manufacture Industry

The mechanism of relative cost advantage is still playing a role in the contemporary international division and world trade.China‘‘‘‘s relative advantage is rich labor resource.The high growth of China‘‘‘‘s world trade has benefited from its low labor cost since reform and opening to the outside.As dual economic structure and gap between regions are existed,and at the aame time the supply of labor force is larger than the demand,China‘‘‘‘s relatively low labor cost will continue for a long period of time.However,advantage of low labor cost is comparative and is less obvious in the capital and Hi-tech industries.As many enterprises developed all directions and overstaffed largely offset the advantage of low cost of labor.So improving labor productivity must be paid attention to in market economy.Although low labor cost benefits reducing production cost,it has negative influence,on one hand it leads to flow national welfare in world trade;on the other hand,it both restricts purchasing power of the people with low income and domestic demand.We believe increasing wages of workers in manufacture industry is necessary.     

China’s CPI Eases to 4 Percent in October

Premier Wen Jiabao Monday urged local governments not to "waste a single minute" in implementing the 4-trillion-yuan ($586 billion) stimulus plan unveiled. "In expanding investment,     

The 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines at Ten: A View from the FTC’s Bureau of Economics

Review of Industrial Organization - Ten years after the adoption of the 2010 revisions to the joint DOJ/FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines, our experience in the Bureau of Economics at the Federal...