This volume explores the promise and limitations of competitive market dynamics, looking at the threats to competition - cartels, agreements, monopolies, and mergers - and the laws in place across the US and European Union to safeguard the process of competition.

Principles of International Economic Law provides a comprehensive overview of the central topics in international economic law, with an emphasis on the interplay between the different economic and political interests on both the international and domestic levels. Following recent tendencies, the book examines classical topics of international economic law - such as WTO law, investment protection, commercial law, and monetary law - in context with emerging aspects of human rights, environmental protection, and the legitimate claims of developing countries. A perfect introductory text to the field of international economic law, the book thoroughly analyses legal developments within their wider political, economic, or social context. Topics covered range from codes of conduct for multinational enterprises, to human rights implications of the exploiting natural resources and the legal impact of climate protection. The book demonstrates the economic foundations and economic implications of legal frameworks. It puts into profile the often-complex relationship between, on the one hand, international standards on liberalization and economic rationality and, on the other, state sovereignty and national preferences. It describes the newly developed forms of economic cooperation between states, such as the G7, the G20, or the BRICS. Herdegen's Principles of International Economic Law has established itself as a leading textbook in the field. This fully updated third edition covers new aspects and developments, with a particular focus on corporate social responsibility, challenges for WTO law, mega-regional agreements such as CPTPP, the impact of human rights law and environmental standards, and cryptocurrencies.

This state-of-the-art Handbook provides unique insights into the governance practices and institutions shaping digitalized public spheres. Focusing on the power relations involved, it presents diverse approaches to key debates in media and communication governance, showcasing groundbreaking advances in the field. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Interest in international law has increased greatly over the past decade, largely because of its central place in discussions such as the Iraq War and Guantanamo, the World Trade Organisation, the anti-capitalist movement, the Kyoto Convention on climate change, and the apparent failure of the international system to deal with the situations in Palestine and Darfur, and the plights of refugees and illegal immigrants around the world. This Very Short Introduction explains what international law is, what its role in international society is, and how it operates. Vaughan Lowe examines what international law can and cannot do and what it is and what it isn't doing to make the world a better place. Focussing on the problems the world faces, Lowe uses terrorism, environmental change, poverty, and international violence to demonstrate the theories and practice of international law, and how the principles can be used for international co-operation.

This unique textbook offers a comprehensive overview of European and international media law, and how globalised communication has shaped it.

Microeconomics - individuals' choices of where to live and work, how much to save, what to buy, and firms' decisions about location, hiring, firing, and investment - involves issues that concern us on a daily basis. But when people think about economics, they tend to place importance on the bigger picture - macroeconomics - including issues such as unemployment, inflation, and the competitiveness of nations. In this Very Short Introduction, Avinash Dixit argues that the microeconomy has a large impact on the economic world, arguably as much as the issues of macroeconomics. Dixit steers a clear path through the huge number of issues related to microeconomics, explaining what happens when things go well, as well as showing how they fail, why that happens, and what can be done about it. Using real-life examples from around the world, using the minimum of mathematics and including simple graphs, he provides insights into economics from psychology and sociology to explain economic behaviour and rational choice. An ideal introduction for anyone interested in business and economics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Eleonora Poli analyses how ideas and material interests have come to determine the evolution of antitrust policies in the USA, EU, Japan and BRICS. She argues that three major economic crises together with market globalisation have changed governments' perceptions of market competition, giving rise to a neo-liberal global phase.

While forces of globalization have created a genuine global marketplace, global rules safeguarding the competitive process in this marketplace have not emerged. International cooperation among national regulators and enforcers is therefore needed to create a competitive global business-environment. The Future of International Competition Law Enforcement, using the variety of legal instruments available to the EU as a point of departure, undertakes an original assessment of the EU's cooperation agreements in the field of competition law The work’s focus is on the bilateral sphere, often labelled as a mere 'interim-solution' awaiting a global agreement; further attention is given to competition provisions in free trade agreements as well as the main multilateral initiatives in this field, in order to determine their relative value.

This book proposes a different approach to theorising and analysing antitrust issues, working on the premise that at present, antitrust is addressed from top-down and narrow perspectives which in effect limit the attention paid to or exclude issues that could otherwise be considered. This reasoning is motivated by the pursuit of inclusiveness and broadness in the antitrust context. The work contends that traditional top-down antitrust theories are weak because they are incomplete and insufficient in their description and analysis of antitrust issues. Thus, it identifies the need to construct a bottom-up approach. Invariably, such an approach would have to avoid ex ante judgments about the suitability of the normative contents of antitrust laws and theories, lest it fall into the same trap that plagues traditional theories. As a possible solution, the author proposes a procedural account referred to as the person-centred approach (built on theories such as Sen’s Capability) and carefully reviews its practicality.

Anti-competitive business cartels, engaging in practices such as price fixing, market sharing, bid rigging and restrictions on output, are now subject to strong official censure and rigorous legal control in a large number of jurisdictions across the world. The longstanding condemnation under the US Sherman Act of 1890 has been taken up (although in a rather different form) during the last thirty years in the EC/EU and in European national jurisdictions in particular, but also in a range of countries outside North America and Europe. Legal control has not only extended geographically but has intensified, as a number of jurisdictions have moved beyond administrative regulation and penalties to embrace enforcement through civil liability and (most significantly in terms of policy and rhetoric) the methods of criminal law. It is therefore timely to consider critically this development of legal control and assess its achievement to date and its future prospects. But such an exercise requires an understanding of the reasons and need for such regulation, based on a clear appreciation of the nature and extent of the economic and social malaise which is its subject. What, more exactly, are such business cartels, why do they come into existence and persist, why are they regarded as being so bad, and what are the objectives within this increasingly complex and multi-level phenomenon of legal control? By seeking to answer such fundamental questions, this book sets a research agenda for a pathology, aetiology and criminology of business cartels, and probes more accurately their nature, operation, endurance and perceived delinquency.