Interpreting Convergence: Where Antitrust Meets Consumer Law

"The core of both consumer and antitrust law is or should be consumer welfare. Few, albeit authoritative, academic writers have dealt with the subject, and most (beginning with the field’s forerunners, Averitt and Lande) have focused on the complementarity of the two bodies of law. As Averitt and Lande argued, antitrust keeps the options open, while consumer law protects the ability of consumers to choose between those options. This is the general idea that consumer law may serve to cure those market failures which antitrust cannot control (eg information problems in credence or experience goods, which Averitt and Lande describe as “inside the head” market failures). Other authors have focused on what happens when the two areas of law encounter one another, finding that competition law may have sometimes a positive and sometimes, and more worryingly, a negative impact. This article, however, will not deal so much with the issue of the complementarity of the two areas of law, but rather of their possible convergence. It will first ask whether the two areas of law overlap and, if so, it will then ask what the most effective way of enforcing them is."