This original collection comprises the first comparative study of competition policy, an area which has emerged as a vibrant and influential discipline within the study of economic policy and policy-making. The victory of market economics means that every capitalist country has created or intensified competition policy. The study compares the six 'model' policy regimes of the USA, Germany, Japan, the UK, Canada, and the European Union. The role of institutions and political process in controlling monopolies, cartels, and mergers is emphasised. the case for convergence and the emergence of a global regime is evaluated. Cutting through the traditional arena of lawyers and economists, this edited volume provides incisive political analysis of the mechanics of international competiton policy. It is an exciting and original new look at how policy is formed on the international stage.

G. Bruce Doern is a professor emeritus in the School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University. He is the author and co-author of numerous books on Canadian politics and policy, including Faith and Fear: The Free Trade Story, with Brian Tomlin, and Canadian Public Policy: Ideas, Structure, Process, with Richard Phidd.

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Stephen Wilks is Professor of Politics at Exeter University

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'a genuine contribution to the competition policy debate. It forms one of the landmarks in the explosively growing literature on competition law and policy...The book contains excellent studies of competition law systems of several polities.'

'the approach of highlighting politics and policy on a country-by-country basis has the very great merit of making crystal-clear the common challenges that national competition institutions currently face ... as this excellent study makes clear, the pull of local history, culture and politics is likely to render a common solution difficult, and a common institutional solution in the form of an international competition authority, in the editors' words, probably a "non-starter"' Richard Brent, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 46, April 1997