Antitrust and competition laws are government regulations that seek to encourage competition by limiting the market power of firms. Some degree of monopolistic or market power has long been a feature of our economies. It is most recognisable today through the activities of companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple. The concept of market power remains a central idea in fields such as industrial organisation, the economics of regulation, and competition law and policy, yet there is still considerable debate about how to define it and how to measure it. Antitrust and Competition Policy suggests a new approach for identifying market power and, building on this, sets out for the first time a sound and comprehensive economic foundation for competition law and policy. This framework sheds new light on a range of antitrust violations, including the discernment of anti-competitive mergers, abusive practices, and restrictive agreements.

Chapter 4 considers how duties of international cooperation safeguard sovereign equality by reconciling the territorial sovereignty of coastal states with landlocked states’ rights to access the oceans through negotiation or binding arbitration.

Chapter 8 looks at what the transactions cost approach says about potential anticompetitive actions of a single firm. Traditionally, the behaviour of a dominant firm is classified into two types: exclusionary and exploitative. We propose that exploitative abuses correspond to the exercise of hold-up, while exclusionary abuses correspond to using the threat of hold-up to change the market structure or prevent entry. The chapter goes on to look at specific issues, such as the treatment of vertical mergers, loyalty rebates, margin squeeze, refusal to deal, aftermarkets, and predatory pricing. The chapter concludes with a brief look at how we can interpret concepts such as abuse of economic dependence in light of the transactions cost approach.

Chapter 5 demonstrates that states have accepted obligations of mandatory cooperation with respect to a variety of other transboundary harms, including piracy, terrorism, and at least some cyberattacks.

Chapter 6 starts the process of exploring the implications of the transaction cost approach in more detail. This chapter focuses on the concept of market power. The chapter starts by looking at textbook neoclassical theory, where market power is related to the slope of the residual demand curve, and some of the implications for enforcement. This is contrasted with the idea of market power as the ability to engage in hold-up. The chapter continues with a discussion of market shares and the concept of market definition. The SSNIP test is introduced. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how market definition is carried out under the transactions cost approach.

Chapter 13 concludes by recapping the book’s key themes, considering potential obstacles to mandatory cooperation, and identifying other matters of international concern, such as pandemics, that are good candidates for mandatory cooperation under the equitable conception of sovereign equality.

Chapter 5, “Envisioning a Plurinational Governance”, analyzes the role and aspirations of Indigenous peoples in the international governance of the Amazon. Based on the analysis of COICA international politics and ACTO strategies and actions regarding Indigenous peoples, the Chapter argues that the international governance of the Amazon has excluded Indigenous peoples by recognizing a limited version of self-determination with no political rights. Many ACTO officials reject the possibility of having the representativeness of Indigenous peoples in the deliberative processes of the organization. However, the continued indigenous activism has opened new opportunities for institutionalizing their participation within ACTO. Despite ACTO’s political weakness and the different institutional challenges of COICA, Indigenous peoples struggle to decolonize the international governance of the Amazon and enact what would be a plurinational international governance.

Chapter 9 is the first of three chapters which apply the transactions-cost theory in specific sectors. Chapter 9 starts with a discussion of the drawbacks of the consumer welfare standard in the context of labour markets. The chapter goes on to demonstrate the particular advantages of the transactions cost approach in the context of labour markets, including a discussion of the sunk investment of labour suppliers (employees) and labour hirers. The chapter discusses the implications of this approach for competition law enforcement, including the treatment of anti-poaching agreements and the role of labour unions and collective bargaining.

By 1776, when a parliamentary survey was held to assess poor law expenditure in England and Wales, the ‘settlement’ system was a familiar feature in local communities, regulating access to poor relief and if necessary removal since the previous century. The introduction explores the broad historiography on the topic and suggests how key provisions emerged in the Restoration era, a development examined in Chapter 1. The discussion proceeds to introduce the arguments of the remaining chapters, in which some of the unintended consequences of the legislation are explored: from the emergence of a huge body of administrative forms to the regulation of kinship and family for the purposes of migration, and on to impacts on parish and county administration, community life, and even the state’s capacity to mobilise forces for large-scale international wars.

Viewed as crucial to the process of European integration, domestic judicial dynamics drew the attention of empirical scholars early on. Participation in the preliminary ruling mechanism and the motivation of domestic judges to engage the Court of Justice, in particular, have formed a central theme of this scholarship. The accumulated research and data have helped unearth valuable insights about patterns of conflict and co-operation in the emerging multi-level legal order, casting a wider light on issues, litigation, and institutional determinations of legal integration. Some unmapped areas have remained, most notably regarding EU law use outside Article 267. While driving the empirical exploration of EU law, this body of scholarship has also suffered from theoretical and methodological limitations.

The concluding chapter provides a summary of the findings and arguments developed in the previous chapters. It also provides a reflection on the policy implications of the study for reforming the international governance of the Amazon and other international rainforests, such as the Congo rainforest. Finally, it provides some reflections on how the proposed framework can be applied to global commons, such as the high seas and seabed beyond national jurisdictions, and outer space.

This use of preferred pronouns for those with trnsgender identities is extraordinarily contentious within the context of debates on sex and gender identity. This chapter begins by exploring why pronouns are so contentious, arguing that their use is an important signifier of underlying beliefs about the relationship between sex and gender identity. From here, the chapter explores whether and under what conditions an emplouyer could interfere with the expression of employees to prohibit or compell the use of particular pronouns. It concludes that this will require a fact-sensitive analysis which begins from the understanding that the right to freedom of expression is robustly protected, especially in the context of compelled speech.