Competition

The Office of Fair Trading ("OFT") commissioned research into the competition policy implications for e-commerce. Competition policy is concerned to prevent anti-competitive behaviour.

Frontier Economics Group has published its report on behalf of the OFT, which looks in turn at three key areas of the application of competition policy: market definition, assessment of market power and assessment of individual agreements and conduct. The good news is that the report concludes that e-commerce does not give rise to any new forms of anti–competitive behaviour and does not raise any issues that cannot be dealt with under the existing competition law framework. However certain areas should be carefully monitored such as the potential for e-commerce to facilitate collusion. In other areas the application of the rules may require adjustment or further research may be useful.