The ICN unilateral conduct working group:

highlights of its work on the objectives of Unilateral Conduct Laws, defining dominance and predatory pricing analysis

Resumen

In most jurisdictions, fi rm unilateral conduct laws prohibit anticompetitive behavior undertaken by a dominant fi rm or an individual with substantial market power. The objective of unilateral conduct laws varies across jurisdictions, but ensuring an effective competitive process is a common objective either in its own right or as a means to achieve other desirable goals such as consumer welfare, economic freedom or effi ciency. Assessing whether a fi rm is dominant or possesses signifi cant market power generally is the fi rst step in the evaluation of potentially anticompetitive unilateral conduct. Market power is defi ned generally as the ability to price profi tably above the competitive level. Dominance or substantial market power is a high degree of market power both with respect to the level to which price can be profi tably raised and to the duration that price can be maintained as such a level1. Laws differ in the methodology for defi ning dominance/sig-nifi cant market power. Many antitrust agencies rely on a behavioral defi nition, focusing on a fi rm’s ability to act in ways that competitively constrained firms could not. Others rely on structural defi nitions, i.e., those focusing primarily or exclusively on an established market share threshold.