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Journal of Competition Law and Economics Advance Access published online on April 22, 2008
Journal of Competition Law and Economics, doi:10.1093/joclec/nhn009
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

AN ANTITRUST LAW INDEX FOR EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION POLICY

Michael W. Nicholson *

This paper introduces means of quantifying the global proliferation in antitrust laws, particularly through measures to assess the presence of such laws across a large set of countries. The Antitrust Law Index maps the presence of "laws on the book" into a numerical measure of competition regimes by assigning binomial scores for the presence of particular laws in a jurisdiction, and then summing the individual components to yield a total score. The key result is that strong laws do not necessarily represent effective antitrust policy. There appears to be a nonlinear relationship between adaptation of antitrust laws and the size of national economies. The results suggest that the impetus for adopting antitrust laws appears to be related to the guidelines of "model" laws and highlights the gap between de jure legislation and de facto implementation.

* Assistant Professor, Business and Economics Division, Transylvania University, 300 N Broadway, Lexington, KY 40508, +1-859-233-8224. E-mail: mnicholson{at}transy.edu.

Roger Boner, Xiaoyang Chen, Mary Coleman, Russ Damtoft, Alan Fisher, Russell Hillberry, Keith Hylton, Dan Hosken, James Langenfeld, Kristina Martin, Morris Morkre, Russ Pittman, David Samuels, J. Gregory Sidak, Roger Stoner, Chris Taylor, Alan Bartley, and two anonymous referees have provided helpful suggestions. I also thank seminar participants at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the 2007 International Competition Network conference in Moscow, the 2007 CDRF symposium in New Delhi, and the 2007 Kentucky Economic Association meetings.


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