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Pittman, Russell; Tineo, Maria --- "Abuse of Dominance Enforcement under Latin American Competition Laws" [2006] ELECD 527; in Marsden, Philip (ed), "Handbook of Research in Trans-Atlantic Antitrust" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Handbook of Research in Trans-Atlantic Antitrust

Editor(s): Marsden, Philip

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845421816

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Abuse of Dominance Enforcement under Latin American Competition Laws

Author(s): Pittman, Russell; Tineo, Maria

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

10 Abuse of dominance enforcement under
Latin American competition laws
Russell Pittman and Maria Tineo1


The widespread adoption of competition laws in the 1990s was accom-
panied by controversy, especially in the US, regarding the importance and
even the appropriateness of introducing such legislation early in the tran-
sition to a market economy.2 Critics feared that active competition law
enforcement would introduce too many false positive regulatory actions,
becoming yet another avenue for inefficient government intervention and
naïve enforcement of the law that might retard economic development by
restricting productive business arrangements and otherwise reducing
incentives for investment.3 For many of these critics, one way to limit the
anticipated negative effects of a competition law would be to introduce `a
competition policy system that emphasized advocacy and enforced
prohibitions on naked trade restraints. [Critics] would not establish
competition laws that prohibit the full range of behavior (abuse of a dom-
inant position, mergers, vertical restraints and price discrimination)
commonly subject to antitrust oversight in older Western competition
systems'.4
No other part of a comprehensive competition law was as subject to crit-
icism as the prohibition against abuse of dominance. It was feared that
abuse provisions were particularly likely to be overenforced, thereby chill-
ing growth-enhancing business conduct and causing considerable harm to
consumers. These critics argued that the abuse of dominance provisions of
new competition laws in developing countries could act as `a Trojan Horse
for the smuggling in of price controls and other dubious ...