How relevant is the relevant market? Lessons from recent antitrust cases

The relevant market plays a dominant role in competition law. This paper acknowledges the importance of delineating the relevant market but puts more emphasis on other factors. Verifying misconduct or assessing mergers can benefit from giving a larger role to entry barriers, vertical and lateral links, information on business strategies, and dynamic considerations. While all these factors do play some part in current EU law practice, they are often used as side-points or circumstantial evidence. This paper suggests to divert from a too narrow market share approach and avoid discussions on joint dominance as an argument to disallow mergers or show misconduct. Instead, a more direct economic approach is more likely to increase welfare.