Does Legal Tradition Affect Competition Policy Performance?

During the early 1990’s, in the early days of the worldwide competition policy boom, Spencer Waller and Joshua Newberg argued that difficulties inherent in grafting common law concepts---such as antitrust---onto non common law traditions would undermine the administration of competition law in non common law tradition countries. Recent independent survey data on the performance of competition programs in 102 nations shows deplorable differences in performance, lending some weight to theWallerNewberg thesis. This article tests whether differences in legal tradition contributes to the observed variance in competition agency performance. A careful understanding of the influence of legal tradition and other factors underscoring the relevance, shortcomings and problems of competition policy performance are useful for determining whether competition programs should be at all reproduced elsewhere, whether they should be modified prior to adoption or whether they should be adopted verbatim. Familiarity with performance factors is also useful both for program administration and program sequencing. Comparative examinations of competition programs enable decision-makers to properly allocate resources and to address policy issues.