Cooperation, Comity, and Competition Policy

Cooperation, Comity, and Competition Policy, edited by Andrew T. Guzman, illustrates how domestic competition law policies intersect with the realities of international business. It offers a discussion of what might be done to improve the way in which cross-border business is handled by competition policy.

The first part of the book provides country reports written by local experts explaining the extraterritorial reach of national laws. Each country report summarizes existing domestic law and examines the conditions under which each country applies its substantive competition laws to conduct that takes place abroad. These chapters also address the question of comity, meaning the circumstances in which a country would decline to exercise jurisdiction on the grounds that another state is the more appropriate jurisdiction. Finally, the extent of cooperation between the local government and other states is examined. In conducting cross-border business activity, these reports provide the reader with a sense of the multiple jurisdictions that a business must consider within the scope of how laws from various states interact and overlap. The countries covered include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the EC, Israel, Japan, Singapore and the United States.

The second part of the book offers several proposals for effectively managing these overlapping competition policy regimes. Written by top academics and practitioners, the proposals render some of the most important current thinking on the topic.

The country reports and the expert policy proposals together provide a unique perspective on international competition policy and the challenges of the international competition policy regime.

Andrew T. Guzman is Professor of Law, Director of the Advanced Law Degree Programs, and Associate Dean for International and Executive Education at Berkeley Law School, University of California, Berkeley. Professor Guzman holds a J.D. and Ph.D. (economics) from Harvard University. He has written extensively on international trade, international competition policy, international regulatory matters, foreign direct investment and public international law. He is the author of How International Law Works from Oxford University Press and International Trade Law (with Joost Pauwelyn) from Wolters Kluwer and co-editor of the Research Handbook of International Economic Law (with Alan Sykes) from Edward Elgar. Professor Guzman is on the board of editors of several academic journals and is a member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.