The Case for a Multilateral Agreement on Competition Policy: A Developing Country Perspective

Although the issue of trade and competition policy has been dropped from the Work Programmes of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, it continues to be discussed in other fora and may return to the WTO after the completion of the Round. This article assesses the case for an agreement from the perspective of developing countries. It begins by reviewing the 'development dimension' of the WTO debate and then examines three specific antitrust issues that were of considerable relevance to developing countries but were not pursued: export cartels, anti-dumping and intellectual property rights (IPRs). There follows a critical assessment of the empirical and theoretical arguments for the kind of agreement that was being advocated to deal with international cartels. Alternative proposals, involving developing countries 'outsourcing' antitrust enforcement to developed countries, are also sceptically examined, as is the relevance for developing countries of the kind of competition policy that is currently in place in developed countries. Finally, a general approach to international trade agreements suggests that developing countries had nothing to gain from the proposal that was on the table, and the article concludes by proposing a range of more suitable alternatives. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.