CLARS-Economics Session with Dr Darryl Biggar, ACCC

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CLARS-Economics Session with Dr Darryl Biggar, ACCC

This session asks the question "Is protecting sunk investments the primary economic rationale for competition law?"

By Journey to Excellence Program

Date and time

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM PDT

Location

Online

About this event

Note: This is an internal event for Monash University staff and students.

What is the economic rationale for competition law? What is the economic harm that competition law is designed to address?

These questions are of fundamental importance for competition agencies or courts who seek to apply the law, and for public policy professionals seeking to reform the law. The conventional economic approach to public policy suggests that competition law should seek to promote total economic welfare (defined as the sum of producers’ surplus and consumers’ surplus), but competition laws are not written or enforced in a manner that is consistent with this hypothesis.

It has been common (particularly in the US) to assert that competition law seeks to promote a concept of consumer welfare, but on closer inspection we find that competition laws are not consistent with promoting the welfare of consumers either. Some commentators argue that competition law should protect the competitive process, but this approach lacks a foundation in welfare economics and therefore lacks the ability to make basic trade‐offs between desirable goals.

In this talk, Dr Biggar will propose an alternative hypothesis as the economic foundation for competition law. This alternative focuses on the sunk, relationship-specific investments made by market participants. This approach asserts that an important, and overlooked, role of competition law is to protect trading partners from the threat of hold-up, where it is unreasonable for the parties to use conventional mechanisms to protect those sunk investments themselves. This approach can help to explain features of competition law and law enforcement that cannot be explained by the traditional consumer welfare or total welfare frameworks. This approach offers promise by providing a consistent, comprehensive, economic foundation for competition law.

Note: This session will take place on Zoom.

Speaker

Dr Darryl Biggar, Special Economic Advisor to the ACCC

Dr Biggar is the Special Economic Adviser (Regulatory) at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). He provides advice on a range of competition and regulation matters, especially relating to the design of markets and regulatory frameworks in the energy sector. In August 2014 Wiley published his textbook (with Mohammad Hesamzadeh) on The Economics of Electricity Markets. He has also published in a number of economics and engineering journals, including IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Energy Policy, and the Journal of Regulatory Economics. In 2010 Dr Biggar won the inaugural distinguished scholar award from the International Confederation of Energy Regulators.

Prior to working at the ACCC, Dr Biggar was as an economist with the Competition Division of the OECD. He has also worked for the New Zealand Treasury and as a Lecturer in Law and Economics at University College London.

Darryl has a PhD in Economics from Stanford University and an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University. He is originally from New Zealand.

Co-Hosts

Dr Mel Marquis, Monash Law

A/Professor Zhijun Chen, Economics, Monash Business School

Order of Events

3.00pm - Welcome

3.05pm - Presentation by Dr Darryl Biggar, ACCC

3.40pm - General Q&A

4.00pm - Event concludes

Contact us

Name: Janice Hugo

E-Mail: janice.hugo@monash.edu

Phone: 03 9905 3327

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