Competition Policy and the Global Trading System: A Developing-Country Perspective

1735 The major options for encouraging trade competition and banning anticompetitive practices are unlikely to have much of a downside for developing countries. Those that are most advantageous are likely to be opposed by special-interest groups in industrial countries. Summary findings Starting in the late 1980s, policymakers and academics began increasingly to call for the development of multilateral discipline on anticompetitive practices. Some believe that falling trade barriers must be complemented by antitrust measures to ensure that foreign competition materializes; some believe that without multilateral discipline it would be impossible to limit the use of antidumping and related policies; and some believe that the exercise of market power by global multinationals requires a global code on competition. Efforts to establish multilateral disciplines on competition have resulted only in various " codes of conduct, " none of them legally enforceable. But prospects for negotiating an agreement improved with the recent decision at the first ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to establish a working group on the topic. Hoekman evaluates various options from the perspective of developing countries agreeing to minimum standards for national antitrust laws; expanding the reach of the WTO provision on nullification and impairment to policies that restrict competition; granting the WTO a mandate to advocate competition; and doing nothing. He concludes that developing countries would benefit from an agreement that: • Bans price-fixing and market-sharing. • Includes a ban on export cartels. • Initiates a process of replacing antidumping actions with enforcement of domestic competition laws. • Strengthens the WTO's mandate to advocate competition and to settle disputes. Achieving such an agreement may be quite difficult, however, as some of these elements will be opposed by various special-interest groups in industrial countries. This paper— a product of the International Trade Division, International Economics Department —draws on an earlier version of a paper presented at the seventh U. The Policy Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they …