The Supreme Court rules in favor of FNE’s position in an exclusionary abuse case in cigarettes market 4/12/12 ” | 04 / 12 / 2012

On December the 4th, the Supreme Court ruled on the recourses submitted by the FNE and the private plaintiff Philip Morris challenging TDLC’s Ruling No. 115/2011. Overruling in part TDLC’s decision, the Supreme Court complemented it by imposing a fine up to the equivalent of USD$ 1.5 m. approx. for incurring in an exclusionary abuse of dominance in the cigarettes sales & marketing market. Read more…

Study on legal treatment of vertical restraints released | 29 / 10 / 2012

Today, the FNE is making public a research paper by Michael Jacobs, a consultant to the agency. This study—a companion piece to Professor Patrick Rey’s report for the FNE regarding the economics of vertical restraints, which was published on the FNE website on 22 October, 2012—considers how the important policy implications raised by Professor Rey’s analysis might be translated into effective enforcement standards. To that end, the paper examines the ongoing debate over the legal treatment of one particular type of vertical restraint, resale price maintenance (RPM), with the hope that any insights derived can be applied more broadly in the Chilean context.

Beginning with a brief discussion of decision theory and the establishment of legal standards, the paper then discusses the theoretical and (limited) empirical literature on RPM, how that literature has influenced the legal standards in the U.S. and elsewhere, and various standards for RPM that have been proposed during the debate leading up to and following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Leegin.

The study is available here.

FNE publishes market study on private health care, elaborated by the PUCV. | 24 / 10 / 2012

As a part of the “Día de la Competencia” (Competition Day), the FNE released the ‘Market Study on Private Healt Care’ elaborated by the PUCV. Read more…

Guidelines for Horizontal Merger Analysis | 23 / 10 / 2012

Following a period for receiving comments to a previous draft, and after a due consideration of the comments received, last October 23^rd, the FNE uploaded to its web site the final version of the document “2012 Internal Guide for Horizontal Merger Analysis”. This brings to an end the process initiated in June 2012.

The guide is an internal regulation for the FNE, neither binding for the Competition Tribunal nor for the Supreme Court. The document does not change nor affects the legal proceeding for non-adversarial consultations regulated in article 18 No. 2 of the Competition Act.

An English version of the text is available here

Report on vertical restraints by Patrick Rey is made publicly available | 22 / 10 / 2012

The FNE made publicly available a report on vertical restraints prepared for the FNE by Prof. Patrick Rey. The funding for the report was provided by the Chilean International Cooperation Agency, as part of a cooperation project between Chile and Mexico. The report reviews the economic literature on vertical restraints and analyzes consumers’ harms and benefits associated with these practices.

The report is available here

A workshop on Econometric techniques in Merger Review will be hosted by the FNE. Applications for attendance are available | 01 / 10 / 2012

The FNE will host a workshop on advanced econometric and quantitative techniques currently applied in merger review by the world leading competition agencies. Presentations and other workshop activities will be conducted by three distinguished experts in applied economics from the United Kingdom, which have also experience as consultants of leading competition Read more…