What is the main think about competition?
Answers
Americans love to compete. More Americans strongly agreed than any other surveyed country’s residents that they like situations where they compete.1 Praised in various contexts,2 competition is the backbone of US economic policy. The US Supreme Court observed, ‘The heart of our national economic policy long has been faith in the value of competition.’3 The belief in competition is not only embodied in the antitrust laws. Every US executive agency, for example, is legally required to have an advocate for competition.4
Competition advocacy is thriving internationally.5 The past 20 years witnessed more countries with antitrust laws and the birth and growth of the International Competition Network (ICN), an international organization of governmental competition authorities, with over 100 member countries.6 Although different constituencies accept to different degrees the benefits of competition and competition policy, the strongest competition advocates, in an ICN survey, were among the academic community, consumer associations, media, and nongovernmental organizations.7 ‘Within OECD countries, competition is now broadly accepted as the best available mechanism for maximising the things that one can demand from an economic system in most circumstances.’8