Antitrust Systems: Searching similarities between East Asia and Chile

Críspulo Marmolejo, Universidad Santo Tomás

Abstract

The study of Free Competition, Monopolies and Antitrust laws have a really important meaning for the developing of free markets in a global context. Free Competition is currently one of the main requirements to get the achievements of efficiency, transparency and dynamism in any market, especially in developing countries where these factors need to be considered as important instruments of economic growing and poverty decreasing. East Asia is an area that have been implemented several reforms structured upon the basis of free market, which it means a sustainable growing of GDP, opening to Foreign Direct Investment, protection of property rights and eliminating barriers to new actors in national contexts. Tradition, respect, formality and sometimes some suspicion against foreigners, have been adapted by a huge interest to study and learn many issues about concepts of freedom, property rights, and also, the way how the global market is working. The emergence of China as a big actor in the worldwide economy, the very American inspired regulatory model of Korea, the influence of United States in the Japanese constitutional design and the antitrust law – except in some substance and enforcement - , and also the application in Chile of many practices and doctrines of the Chicago School of economics, imply an interesting object of analysis in this paper. The text analyzes the main characteristics of the antitrust laws applied to the experiences of three countries in East Asia (China, Korea and Japan) and exploring some similarities with the antitrust system of Chile. The text establishes that the four countries implemented free market economies, and as a consequence of this, a collection of legal rules on monopolies and protection of the free competition. Also, all the cases studied are experiencing the phenomena of corporate concentration, which has encouraged to its regulatory agencies to design administrative rules called “Merger Guidelines” and implies a tremendous challenge for the new Antimonopoly Chinese Law.