OREANDA-NEWS. March 11, 2011. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) held a workshop on applying economic analysis to antimonopoly investigations. The workshop was organised jointly by FAS Russia, “Promoting Competition” Non-Commercial Partnership and a consulting agency “RBB Economics”, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

“RBB Economics” consults European competition authorities, including the European Commission, and legal firms on economic aspects of investigating violations of competition law.

Experts of “RBB Economics”, Messrs. Vitaly Prouzhansky and Jan Peter Van Der Veer, explained to FAS Russia’s representatives specifics of economic analysis in investigating the most typical antimonopoly violations.

Special attention was paid to the principles followed by the European Commissions to determine the boundaries of the goods markets, which take into account product functionalities, distribution system and the level of competition between brand products and private labels, and to the issues of ex post evaluation of possible unilateral effects of transactions.

The presentation about investigation of a case on vertical restrictions put the emphasis on evaluating the balance of adverse consequences and positive effects of such restrictions to the end consumers.

The case on abusing market dominance, presented at the workshop, help the audience to understand approaches of the European Commission to evaluation of how efficient are competitors operating on the market and how actions of the dominant company affect profitability of “efficient competitors”.

Presentations of the experts induced a keen interest of FAS members of staff, which caused vivid discussions in follow-up of each presentation.

Lesya Davydova, the Head of the FAS Russia’s Department for International Economic Cooperation, said: “We had one of those workshops that entail arresting discussion and comparison of competition enforcement practice in Russia and Europe. I am convinced that such workshops enhance knowledge of our officers, which facilitates effective protection of competition”.