Economics for Competition Lawyers (LAWS70010)

Competition law cases before the courts, tribunals and administrative agencies and applications for clearance of mergers by administrative agencies require economic analysis. This analysis increasingly relies on sophisticated techniques of economics, such as oligopoly models, game theory, critical loss analysis and the use of regression to analyse data. This subject provides an opportunity for competition lawyers to familiarise themselves with these techniques so that they can more readily identify what evidence and information might be appropriate in particular cases. The subject makes no use of algebra; the techniques are presented by means of simple numerical examples. The lecturer is one of Australia’s leading economists in this field and over a period of three decades has given advice to all the leading law firms in Australia and New Zealand and competition authorities on economic issues and oral evidence in many of the leading cases in both countries.

Principal topics include:

• The values underlying competition law
• Markets, market power and competition
• The economics of collusion
• Barriers to entry
• The effect of vertical arrangements on competition
• Economic issues in misuse of market power
• Mergers with homogeneous products
• Mergers with differentiated products
• Economic efficiency and authorisation
• Quantification of penalties and damages.