Do we need government intervention in the form of Competition Policy? If so, why? Issues: mergers,cartels,industry concentration and their impact on the competition in Europe and USA.

The best known passage in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" (1776) says: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices,". He also thought that "It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice." Nowadays competition authorities seem to think …

…-03.pdf) *Economic Research Service/USDA - www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib784 *http://www.econlib.org/library *European Industrial Relations Observatory on-line - http://www.eiro.eurofound.ie/1998/07/feature/uk9807136f.html *European Union competition policy - XXXII Report on competition policy (2002) by European Commission Directorate-General for Competition from http://europa.eu.int *http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/ *http://www.bized.ac.uk *Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development - http://www.oecd.org