Etienne Pfister

This set of contributions presents the various competitive effects associated with minority shareholdings. It also considers how these effects can be dealt with either through notifications to the competition authority, especially with the case of the German and British legislations, or through (...)

Interview conducted by David Sevy Compass Lexecon. You are the new Chief Economist of the Competition Authority as of 1 May 2013. Where and when did your interest in market regulation and competition policy in particular originate, and how does it fit in with your background? My doctoral (...)

The De minimis communication of the European Commission defines under which conditions agreements between firms will not be considered to restrict competition in a sensitive way. The three contributions in this article discuss its effectiveness in promoting legal security for firms, especially (...)

Nowadays, commitments decisions of the competition authorities are, most of the time, preceded by a consultation of third parties. These "market tests" have become a central step of the antitrust procedure and merger control. The authors of this Tendances present their experience in using this (...)

Paradoxically, competition law today is frequently used more as a weapon of defence than to challenge networks, and notably against certain rules of national law. When relied on as a means of challenging networks, competition law is mainly used either to circumvent the networks, or to gain (...)

Both aspects of the grocery retail sector regulation, i.e. the rules on unfair behaviours and those governing the market structures have evolved in different ways since 2005. Further to the Competition Authority’s opinion of 17 December 2010 discussions moved toward the relevance of more (...)

This set of three papers is derived from the training session on the predatory strategies organised by Concurrences Review that has held on 5th July 2010 in Paris. The first paper is a short introduction of the Economist Etienne Pfister presenting the preemptive strategies and how these (...)

This article reviews the various potential effects of exclusive supply agreements on competition and firm investments and compares it to the reasoning made by the Conseil or Autorité de la concurrence in its decisions. In particular, this analytical framework is put into perspective with the (...)

La puissance d’achat a fait l’objet ces dernières années de nombreux rapports et forums en droit de la concurrence. Dans le cas français, elle est sans doute appelée à jouer un rôle accru dans le jeu concurrentiel en vertu des réformes récentes de la réglementation de la distribution de détail. Cet (...)

This article surveys the conclusions of theoretical models evaluating the impact of a ban on price discrimination in input markets. Then it considers the potential gains associated with the negociability of general terms of sales, compared to a reform allowing retailers to diminish their (...)

This article presents the results of a survey carried out by the Competition Council for the mission chaired by Marie-Dominique Hagelsteen on the negotiability of general terms and conditions of sale. It shows that, despite concerns about the abuse of buying power sometimes allegedly committed (...)