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Anthropology, History and the "More Economic Approach" in European Competition Law - A Review Essay
International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (2010)
  • David J. Gerber
Abstract

In several works over the last decade, Wolfgang Fikentscher has reminded us that there are ways of viewing competition law that need not begin and end with economics—its concepts, its language, and its science-based normative stance. Discussions of competition law in the United States and increasingly in Europe generally dismiss or marginalize views of competition law that are not circumscribed by economic science. In the works reviewed here, Fikentscher takes issue with the so-called “more economic approach” to law, particularly, competition law. As he has said on other occasions, he favors “a less economic approach” to competition law. Many in Europe and elsewhere may find value in some of his perspectives and insights, regardless of whether they accept his conclusions. Moreover, although his views clash with current orthodoxy in the US and Europe, they represent concerns that are far more frequently found in other parts of the world, but that are there often less fully elaborated.

Disciplines
Publication Date
2010
Citation Information
Anthropology, History and the "More Economic Approach" in European Competition Law - A Review Essay, 41 International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law 441 (2010).