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Buyer power and its treatment in EU/EEA Competition Law is a topic that has received little academic attention until now. Buyer power represents the other side of competition law and concerns buying conducts and how a buyer can exert its market power to the detriment of competition. On Friday 10 February, BECCLE’s Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui will be defending his PhD thesis on Buyer Power in EU Competition Law.
The title on Ignacio’s thesis is: Buyer Power in EU/EEA Competition Law
Buyer power is an often discussed – and somewhat neglected – aspect of the competition law regulation. Unlike traditional cases, its focus is on the conducts of buyers that may adversely affect the wellbeing of the market and, therefore, be prohibited by competition law. Hence, it is the buyer and not the seller the source of concerns and problems.
Ignacio’s dissertation aims at presenting a holistic discussion of buyer power across all competition law areas. Unlike most works in the field, the study is not centered in different areas of the application of the law (coordinated and unilateral behaviors, and mergers) but rather on different ‘theories of harm’ that explain how buyer power may produce anticompetitive effects. Also, the dissertation adopts an ‘economically informed legal analysis’ methodology in which the legal discussion is accompanied and guided by microeconomics and industrial organization to better understand the regulation to this market power problem.
One of Ignacio’s the main findings is that buyer power can employed in an anticompetitive way, and when this occurs EU competition law is well equipped to deal with these abuses. However, more often than not, buyer (bargaining) power has an efficiency enhancing effect in the market as it reduces or neutralizes opposing seller market power, approaching prices towards the competitive level.
Trial lecture
9 Fabruary 2017, 14.15 – 15.00.
Auditorium 2, Faculty of Law, UoB.
Topic: Buyer power. How to reconcile ordoliberalism, neoclassical economics and current industrial organization research? What are the legal (competition law) implications and the relative strengths and weaknesses of these approaches?
More info on the trial lecture is available here…
Defence
10 Fabruary 2017, 10.15 – 14.00.
Auditorium 2, Faculty of Law, UoB.
Title of the thesis: Buyer Power in EU/EEA Competition Law
Opponents: Professor Lars Henriksson, Stockholm School of Economics, and Professor Petri Petri Kuoppamäkin, Alto University
Leader of the committee: Professor Caroline Heide-Jørgensen, University of Copenhagen
More information on the defence is available here…
Personalia:
Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui was born in Caracas (Venezuela) on September 25, 1984. He holds a Bachelor in Law Summa Cum Laude at the Andrés Bello Catholic University and an LL.M. with distinction at the University of Vienna. Ignacio has worked for several years as an attorney in different law firms in Venezuela, as well as being an intern at the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria. In 2012 he became a PhD Fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bergen where he teaches EU/EEA Public Procurement Law. He is the author of several publications and has been awarded several scholarships and distinctions.
His supervisors were Ass. Prof. Ronny Gjendemsjø and Prof. Erling Hjelmeng.
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