ABSTRACT
This chapter explains what were seen, inter alia, as key per se prohibitions in the South African Competition Act of practices that dominance, monopoly power, is considered to give rise to. Of all the prohibitions examined, namely monopoly pricing, predatory pricing, and price discrimination, the aim was to demonstrate that these activities should not be viewed as anticompetitive outright just because a dominant firm may produce them. Strong theoretical reasons exist to see each of these activities as symptomatic of rivalry and not as something that works against competition. In the case of monopoly pricing, if it prevailed without government support this would reflect competition of the Schumpeterian-Littlechild sort, where the innovation mechanism is temporarily overpowering the transfer mechanism, resulting in price skimming. Over time the transfer mechanism comes to gain ground and this price skimming becomes subject to the Reekie product filter, which leads to marginal cost being approached in the long run.
