Ex-post evaluation of competition authorities' actvities

Ex-post evaluation of competition authorities’ activities is acquiring growing importance in international debate. Both academic literature and Competition Authorities have started to evaluate on regular basis competition policy enforcement aiming to assess the degree of its effectiveness. The thesis is aimed at providing an assessment of recent antitrust enforcement practice in Europe after the introduction of Regulation No. 1/2003, focusing on commitment decisions introduced by Article 9. After having provided a general framework for ex-post analysis of competition authorities’ decisions, the thesis develops through two additional independent and original papers grounded on different streams of literature. The case study evaluation methodology is employed to assess the impact of the introduction of commitment decisions (decisioni con impegni) in Italian antitrust law. Results from the analysis of all decisions adopted up to March 2010 show that commitment decisions in less than five years deeply changed antitrust enforcement in Italy with almost 60% of the cases ended under the new procedure. An event study is instead used to assess stock market reactions to European Commission’s antitrust decisions adopted from January 2005 to December 2010. The study provides strong negative and statistically significant results for prohibition decisions, while positive statistically significant returns are associated with commitments decisions thus suggesting that markets appreciate quick and without sanction conclusion of antitrust procedures. The results of both studies suggest that commitment decisions may have not minor effects on deterrence and consequently competition authorities should carefully evaluate the use of negotiated procedures.