The Dialectics of Competition Law: Sketching the Ordo-Austrian Approach to Antitrust

Abstract

This paper explores the qualitative (deontological) approaches to the phenomenon of economic competition, synthesizing the Ordoliberal and the Austrian perceptions of antitrust economics, policy and law. It critically addresses the main normative motto of the contemporary antitrust, embedded in the ethos of consumer/total welfare, as well as the methodological reduction of competition policy to the empirical analysis. Not contesting the paramount role of economics in the realm of antitrust, it demonstrates why the phenomenon of competition cannot be narrowed down to its welfare-generating function. By comparing the regulatory mechanisms of the competitive process in the real economy and sports it depicts some potential methodological analogies, between the two realms.