5 - Competition Law as Collective Bargaining Law

Summary

In many countries, the analysis of economic coordination--for the purposes of competition law and otherwise--has been dominated by neoclassical economics. Building on heterodox economics and economic sociology, this chapter outlines an alternative perspective--a “market governance” framework--to make sense of the coordination of economic actors--including workers--with a focus on pricing decisions. The framework treats prices as always subject to the coordinating activities of market participants, and never emerging out of “free competition”, which is an illusion. Several implications of the account are sketched, including a reinterpretation of several domains that are commonly taken to be “free markets” and a critical reexamination of the contemporary approval of the “efficiency” of hierarchical centralized coordination in enormous multinational corporations.