Theories of harm and effects in EU competition law and WTO law

This chapter's purpose is to compare the approaches to theories of harm and effects in WTO law and EU competition law and to evaluate the former according to the law and economics benchmark adopted in chapter 1. The goal is to provide an answer to whether WTO law meets the benchmark that was established in chapter 5 for EU competition law. The book's method requires four intermediary steps before normative conclusions can be made. These, which also circumscribe this chapter's structure, are the establishment of functional similarity, the identification of similarities and differences in the two systems, the attempt to account for similarities and differences, i.e. why 'harm' is conceptualised and applied the way it does in WTO law, and finally the appraisal of the two legal systems' similarities and differences in order to determine whether WTO law meets the benchmark set by EU competition law. The chapter establishes that EU competition law is overall more administrable, more efficient, and more effective in the approach it takes to proving infringements through theories of harm and effects than WTO law's general approach to non-discrimination.