This website will help you better undestand this anonymous strength called "competition", which benefits everyone, has the virtue to push the price down, stimulates creativity and productivity, creates new jobs and fosters economic growth, and .... (in my opinion) result in fair rewards.
Competition is not an ideology, nor liberal neither socialist. It's also not a ideal ; It's just a mechanism - but a very strong one-, a necessary ingredient for prosperity which stimulate economic democracy in business.
Competition and the fight against cartels
When you compete in the market, you have to respect some rules, as in a sports game. The most important rule is to take your strategic decisions (such as fixing your price) independently from your competitors. In particular, fixing prices with competitors, dividing markets with them, collectively excluding new competitors from the market ("collective boycott") are absolutely prohibited by competition law. This kind of behavior -called "cartel"- is injustified because the price increase is not the result of your merits (better products, innovative marketing, ...). Antitrust authorities fight against this anticompetitive practices, which cause huge damages to the economy and to consumers.
Low cost competition
In order to escape from competition and competitors, firms can differenciate their products and process, especially with a strategy of cost cutting. The low cost model consists in redefining and simplifiyng existing products in order to reduce the production costs (for instance, by a large standardization of production process) and ... the prices. The low cost approach should be clearly distinguished from usual practices such as discount or rebate because the low cost is more than a strategy of low price : it relys on a strong redefinition of products, based on a new approach of consumers needs and exceptations.
The low cost model has strong effects on competition in some sectors such as airlines : in decreasing prices, low cost threatens existing competitors (sometimes in a monopoly position) and forces them to adapt their strategies and renewal their own model.
Competition in France
In this section, I propose a selection of their papers about : the role of competition in economic growth, the impact of competition on employment, the competition as a means to break up injustified rents, the French critical attitude towards competition.
Anticompetitive practices and class actions
Beyond the intervention of competition authorities, anticompetitive practices could result in private actions, with the objective to compensate victims and repair damages. The issue of civil action in Europe is currently debated, in a context of underenforcement by public authorities. In France, the debate focuses on the opportunity to introduce a "class action" system.
Competition and Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)
The pharmaceutical industry is characterized by huge R&D investments which are necessary to discover and launch new drugs and vaccines on the market. Innovating products are protected by Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), such as patents and trademarks. The patent consists in giving the innovator a commercial exclusivity for a certain period of time (twenty years), before the innovative product falls in the public domain.
Two aspects of the relation between patent and competition are treated in this section :
- which kind of strategies could be used by laboratories, in order to delay the entry of competing products on the market, in particular when patents expire ? To what extent are these strategies allowed by antitrust authorities and in conformity with competition law ?
- how to reconciliate patent implementation (after the WTO agreement on intellectual property rights in 2005) with the free access to drugs for poor people in developing countries ?
All papers published on this website are in free access on Internet, except my papers in the review Concurrences, for which I obtained the editor authorization. I would like to thank him sincerely for his cooperation.
The opinions expressed on this website are mine and don't engage any institutions whith whom I have a professional relationship.
I would like to thank Geneviève, who helped me build this website.
I would also like to thank Michael, who contributed regularly to translating my website in English.
