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Competition law and inequality roundtable

21 June 2016, 4:30 pm–7:30 pm

Inequality

Event Information

Open to

All

Organiser

UCL Centre for Law, Economics & Society (CLES)

Location

UCL Sir Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre, G06, Roberts Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

A special roundtable on Competition Law and Inequality organised by the UCL Centre for Law, Economics & Society (CLES)

Chair: Prof. Ioannis Lianos, UCL Faculty of Laws; Director, CLES

Speakers

  • Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele, South African Competition Commission
  • Prof. Damien Geradin , Tilburg University, George Mason University and UCL Faculty of Laws
  • Prof. Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Iowa Law School & UCL Faculty of Laws
  • Prof. Morten Hviid, University of East Anglia
  • Prof. Bill Kovacic, King’s College London, Dickson Poon School of Law & George Washington University
  • Prof. Bruce Lyons, University of East Anglia
  • Sean Ennis and Pedro Gonzaga, OECD
  • Ms. Azza Raslan, World Bank & UCL Faculty of Laws
  • Prof. Tommaso Valletti, Imperial College London / Chief Economist (apppointed), European Commission

About this event

In his recent book on Inequality: What can be done? professor Tony Atkinson makes the following proposal:

“Proposal 2: Public policy should aim at a proper balance of power among stakeholders, and to this end should a) introduce an explicitly distributional dimension into competition policy; […]”

This proposal raises a number of questions with regard to the way competition law may square with inequality concerns.

First, is the distributional dimension already taken into account in competition law? And if yes, is a “proper” balance of power among stakeholders achieved? Who should define this “proper” balance of power?

Second, are the concepts and instruments of competition law ready for a more pronounced distributional dimension? What would be the concepts and instruments ones needs to develop and the reforms one needs to bring to modern competition law enforcement so as to make it more distributive justice compatible?

Third, how a more proactive distributive justice agenda in competition law may square with the global governance of antitrust and the fact that consumers are mostly found in developed countries (rather than developing ones) and that many of the actions taken by competition authorities may be thought of as focusing only on certain parts of the population with higher than average revenue?

Fourth, is the lack of competition one of the causes of the inequality currently observed in developed countries, such as the Unites States and the European Union?

Fifth, it seems that the growing financialisation of the economy has played some role in exacerbating inequalities. As a CEPR blog report recently noted “(t)he financial sector has seen a moderate increase in its share of the workforce and a dramatic increase in pay per worker (between 1978 and 2000, wages rose 73.7 percent in the financial sector but rose just 12.0 percent in the private sector more generally). These two factors have allowed finance to capture a growing share of wages and made it so most Americans are unable to share in the economy’s gains” ( http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/the-growth-of-finance-in-graphs ). If this is true, has the lack of an active competition law enforcement with regard to the financial sector for decades played a role? Are the existing competition law tools sufficient, or not, to take into account the growing importance of overlapping financial investor ownership? What can be done to remedy this problem, in case of course this is something one considers to be a priority?

Materials to download