Lévêque, François; Shelanski, Howard --- "Introduction" [2009] ELECD 562; in Lévêque, François; Shelanski, Howard (eds), "Antitrust and Regulation in the EU and US" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Antitrust and Regulation in the EU and US

Editor(s): Lévêque, François; Shelanski, Howard

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207616

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Lévêque, François; Shelanski, Howard

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

Introduction: balancing antitrust and
regulation
François Lévêque and Howard Shelanski

For most of the past century there has been a dichotomy across industrial
sectors between those industries governed primarily by general competition
policy ­ antitrust ­ and those governed primarily by sector-specific rules ­
regulation. In several sectors of the economy, notably telecommunications
and energy but in some cases also including transportation, agriculture,
and health care, regulation has been dominant, even if not always exclu-
sive of general antitrust enforcement. The telecommunications sector in
the United States is an example: AT&T's private monopoly was governed
principally by a network of regulations imposed by individual state public
utility commissions and by the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC); but AT&T's monopoly was not immune from prosecution under
the US antitrust laws for anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it was antitrust
prosecution that ultimately led to the break-up of AT&T in 1984. Over the
past 20 years, several traditionally regulated economic sectors have been
moving, to varying degrees, to competition. The past decade, for example,
has seen substantial liberalization in both telecommunications and electric-
ity generation. As this transition toward competition has progressed, the
traditional balance of regulation versus antitrust comes into question. To
what extent is sector-specific regulation still warranted as monopoly power
erodes? Is antitrust law in a given jurisdiction up to the task of protecting
consumers and promoting competition?
The chapters in this volume address various aspects of the evolving
balance between antitrust and regulation ...