The Evolution of Competition Law in New Zealand

As a compact, liberal, industrialized democracy, 1980s New Zealand proved a useful place to try out the latest fads in market deregulation. This title presents a comprehensive chronicle and critical analysis of how well New Zealand's competition law fared in combatting mergers, monopolies, and cartels.

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The modern era of competition law in New Zealand began with the Commerce Act 1986. Since then, a steady and impressive corpus of case law had traversed all the usual major areas of antitrust law: cartels, resale price maintenance, exclusive dealing, tying, group boycotts, monopolization, mergers and acquisitions, exempted sectors, and the role of economic evidence. This volume explains the rationale for the various major reforms, the ongoing contestation between the Harvard and Chicago Schools of antitrust, and traces the developments of key concepts over the last 34 years.

This title also explores systemic issues such as how well has New Zealand moulded its own competition law whilst nonetheless selectively drawing upon the policies, case law, and wisdom of foreign jurisdictions; how effectively has it faced the challenge of adapting its fledgling competition law to the reality of being a small, deregulated, open, and distant economy; and how successful was the application of competition law to utilities in the experimental era of 'light handed regulation'.

Written by a New Zealand competition expert, this detailed, original, and comprehensive chronicle of New Zealand's competition law and policy draws together the common threads that mark the modern era and offers some predictions about how the next decades of New Zealand competition law might unfold.