The Case for a Multilateral Agreement on Competition Policy: A Developing Country Perspective

Although the issue of trade and competition policy has beendropped from the Work Programmes of the Doha Round of WorldTrade Organization (WTO) negotiations, it continues to be discussedin other fora and may return to the WTO after the completionof the Round. This article assesses the case for an agreementfrom the perspective of developing countries. It begins by reviewingthe ‘development dimension’ of the WTO debate andthen examines three specific antitrust issues that were of considerablerelevance to developing countries but were not pursued: exportcartels, anti-dumping and intellectual property rights (IPRs).There follows a critical assessment of the empirical and theoreticalarguments for the kind of agreement that was being advocatedto deal with international cartels. Alternative proposals, involvingdeveloping countries ‘outsourcing’ antitrust enforcementto developed countries, are also sceptically examined, as isthe relevance for developing countries of the kind of competitionpolicy that is currently in place in developed countries. Finally,a general approach to international trade agreements suggeststhat developing countries had nothing to gain from the proposalthat was on the table, and the article concludes by proposinga range of more suitable alternatives.