최근 독점규제법 주요 판례에 나타난 비교법경제학적 쟁점 분석

Considering the fact that the increasing numbers of antitrust cases involving complex economic issues and the increasing status of economic analysis in antitrust cases, it is natural to say that economic analysis can be the most reasonable criterion in deciding whether a certain unilateral practice should be prohibited or not. In theory, there is no doubt that economic evidence is essential for proper regulation of unilateral practices. In the real world,however, it should be noted that there always exits a possibility of misuse and/or abuse of economic analysis. In particular, abuse of economic analysis will undermine the credibility of economic evidence itself. Once the reliability of economic analysis itself is undermined, it would be extremely difficult to use the economic evidence as the most reasonable criterion for optimal regulation. Then an undesirable political decision can more easily ignore sound economic reasoning, and distort market. In this sense, as far as the problem of misuse and/or abuse cannot be properly solved, it would hard to say that more economic analysis can guarantee optimal regulation.