Legal Regulation Of The Joint Restriction Of Competition

This dissertation focuses on the study of the control of restrictive agreements in market competition. Restrictive agreements include horizontal and vertical restraints of trade. The restrictive agreements are often practiced in the arena of market competition by collaboration of two or more entreprises. How to control them in a best way is the main concern of this dissertation. It is divided into six parts covering the basic theories of restrictive agreements, economic analysis of restrictive agreements, the theory of parallel conduct, the ways to control horizontal and vertical restraints and international cartel, exemptions of restrictive agreements, and the auther's comments on the counterparts of china's latest draft of antitrust law, and his suggestions concerning the revision of the related part of the draft.The first part studies the common factors in controlling restrictive agreements theoretically. They concern the definition of restrictive agreements, the environments suitable for restrictive agreements, the the definition of the subjects, the interaction between freedom of contracting agreements and the freedom of competition, the legislation model, the defining of imposers of restrictive practices, the rule of reason and the rule of per se illegality, problems of proof and characterization, and the problems encountered when regulating international cartels.The second part deals with the economic analysis of the positive and negative effects of horizontal restraints on competition and ways to control different concrete horizontal restraints respectively. The analysis of horizontal restraints shows that the antitrust enforcement officials and judges should treat most of the horizontal restraints in a measured way under minute assessment. Among all the horizontal restraints, the hardcore cartels including the fixing of prices, the dividing of markets or custormers, group refusal to deal are by their nature contary to freedom of competition and are therefore per se illegality. The others are assessed under the rule of reason. There are many factors that should be considered when weighing a restrictive agreement, among them the market power is most important and decisive. The third part is about the study of vertical restraints. And it is divided into two chapters. Chapter one is about the general theories of vertical restraints containing its concept, the analysis of its effect on competition and consumer welfare, the differences between horizontal restraints and vertical restraints, the problems of vertical restraints in China's market. Chapter two in this part makes a detailed study about the controlling of main kinds of vertical restraints, laying more emphasis on resale price maintenance. The control of vertical restraint is based on the rule of reason in most situations.The fourth part is about the control of international cartels. it analysises the unique traits of international cartels, giving the auther's suggestions on how to regulate international cartels.The fifth part of this thesis is about the exemption rgulations of restrictive agreements. It explores certain categories of agreements which are exempted from the prohibition of antitrust laws based on their benefits to social wellfare. And it also further studies the supervision and withdrawal of the exempted restrictive agreements.The sixth part is about the auther's comments on the stipulations of monopoly agreements of the draft of antimonopoly law of PRC based on the overall studies of restrictive agreements. And the auther's suggestions to legislation body are as follows: china's legislation on restrictive agreements should be concise and principled, future enforcement being focuse on hard core cartels, legislation modeled on EU competition law and analysis referred to American counterpart, and the omittion of procedural part of the draft being fit the intemational trend in that area.