Includes bibliographical references

Antitrust and Competition Laws offers a comparative history and analysis of competition laws, from the current global proliferation of laws back to the pre-modern world before 1880, including classical Athens, India, Rome, imperial China, the Islamic world and post-Roman Europe. The book is intended for members of the global antitrust community — lawyers, economists, scholars and policymakers — as well as readers interested in economic and legal history.

Competition law has reflected changes in economic conditions, developments in economic theory and reconfigurations of political interests. Antitrust and Competition Laws examines recurring issues that continue to the present. History provides not only a broader context to examine those issues but also offers ideas on how they might be resolved today. For example, calls for (re)introduction of social or political policies into U.S. antitrust law — such as protection of small business units, democratic processes or wealth inequalities — raise the important issue how they can be integrated into a legal analysis that essentially rests on economic principles.