The Office hosted 4th Annual Workshop on Economic Issues in Competition Law co-organized with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission

On 7 and 8 June 2011 the U. S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) together with the Office for the Protection of Competition (the Office) hosted 4th Annual Workshop on Economic Issues in Competition Law in Brno, Czech Republic. The event was opened by Petr Gajdušek, the adviser to the Chairman of the Office.

Nearly 50 competition experts from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Kosovo, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia participated in the Workshop. All issues were covered by the FTC experts, senior lawyer Timothy Hughes and his colleague economist Joel Schrag. „The aim of the workshop is to provide the staff of the competition authorities with the principal microeconomics and judicature concepts, that should be taken into consideration during the investigation and decision making process in the competition cases,” Timothy Hughes said.

Both speakers gave their presentations on theoretical and empirical tools for assessing market power, economics of exclusive dealing and market share discounts, economics of bundling products and services, the economics of RPM, evaluation of agreements among competitors as joint ventures and trade associations and the news in US Merger Guidelines. Each theoretical part of the session was followed by case studies from FTC practice.

Timothy Hughes stressed the significant progress of the Central and Eastern European countries, achieved in last few years in the competition enforcement: “The significant difference occurs in the application of the more economic approach as well as in the investigations that are conducted by the competition authorities. The current cases are more focused on the consumer protection, whereas in the past were engaged in the harm of one particular undertaking.” Consumer protection is also the main idea of the Brno’s Workshop according to Timothy Hughes. The economist Joel Schrag emphasized the promotion of more economic approach methods into the competition law: “We are trying to establish the framework which demonstrates which methods are the best to be applied in particular competition cases.” According to the FTC representatives, it is necessary for the future to maintain and develop contacts among competition economists and enforcers.

The participants of the Workshop appreciated the platform of the economic assessment of the presented practices and interactive concept of the Workshop when speakers firstly introduced the essential facts of each case and after discussion presented the FTC procedures and subsequent court action.