One of the topics discussed at this year's International Conference of the Bundeskartellamt was "Requirements of proof in court - the economic approach".
There was of course a broad consensus among the distinguished speakers that economists should help the judge first understand and then assess the issues at stake in the specific industry the practice under consideration relates to. Ideally, only good economic models and valuable empirical data should be integrated into the legal theory put forth by the competition agency and/or the parties. A suitable integration of economic analysis into competition law enforcement is however still to come, as the panel seemed to confirm. A newly published paper by Christian Ewald of the Bundeskartellamt (Ökonomie im Kartellrecht: Vom more economic approach zu sachgerechen Standards forensischer Ökonomie) suggests an interesting solution that requires shifting the current focus of attention from the "more economic approach" to the appropriate standards of forensic economics in competition law.
There was of course a broad consensus among the distinguished speakers that economists should help the judge first understand and then assess the issues at stake in the specific industry the practice under consideration relates to. Ideally, only good economic models and valuable empirical data should be integrated into the legal theory put forth by the competition agency and/or the parties. A suitable integration of economic analysis into competition law enforcement is however still to come, as the panel seemed to confirm. A newly published paper by Christian Ewald of the Bundeskartellamt (Ökonomie im Kartellrecht: Vom more economic approach zu sachgerechen Standards forensischer Ökonomie) suggests an interesting solution that requires shifting the current focus of attention from the "more economic approach" to the appropriate standards of forensic economics in competition law.