ABSTRACT
Competition policy plays a fundamental, but often overlooked, role in the organization of domestic market economies. It is designed to ensure and manage competition, which helps to determine opportunities and incentives for consumers and producers. Without competition, a market becomes staid and begins to allocate resources inefficiently. Competition policies are also called upon to regulate the behaviour of foreign actors — especially firms and governments — which, through trade and investment, can create anticompetitive, oligopolistic and monopolistic business concentrations that dampen domestic competition; that is, serve as private market access barriers. As firms increasingly invest and trade internationally, trade negotiators are increasingly considering the implications of their decisions for competition within their domestic markets and upon the mandates of their competition regulators.
