Globalization and the Limits of National Merger Control Laws

Companies today pursue their goals with little regard for national borders. However, it remains true that business activity is regulated to a significant extent by each national jurisdiction. This is particularly true of mergers; as anyone knows who has ever been involved in a transnational merger in multiple jurisdictions, the knottiest problems and issues arise from variations in national competition and merger laws.

This extremely valuable new book offers an in-depth proposal for an international merger control regime that is firmly grounded in and supported by a framework of economic and legal theory. It arrives at its conclusions along three major avenues:

• • a study of the concepts of global public good and consumer welfare that underliethe progress of globalization;
• • detailed analyses of the two most important and highly developed merger law
systems, those of the European Union and the United States; and
• • a systematic and comprehensive review of the major existing proposals, both institutional and scholarly, for an international merger control regime.

A special chapter is devoted to the complex custodial role of the World Trade Organization, both in its present activity and as is envisioned in various proposals for global competition law.

Globalization and the Limits of National Merger Control Laws takes a significant step toward breaking down one of the last and most intransigent barriers to global free trade. It will be avidly studied and put to use by business lawyers and policymakers everywhere, and will quickly take its place as a fundamental work for teachers and students of international trade and international relations.