It is an oddity of antitrust and competition law that –
although one of the main benefits of competition, and of
competition laws, is supposedly to keep prices down – in
reality competition law is very rarely deployed to combat excessive
pricing by businesses with monopolistic or dominant market
positions. Just recently, however, in 2013, there have been two
significant cases of interventions against excessive pricing
– by competition authorities in China and in South
Africa.
Context
Competition is supposed to benefit consumers by keeping prices
down – that is, as low as possible consistent with a
reasonable rate of return for the businesses supplying the goods or
services concerned. Although it is clearly in the interests of any
business to make as much money as possible, and although this might
be thought to involve the business charging its customers as much
as possible, the fact that the business faces competition acts as a
constraint on overcharging its
