Competition Policy in Developing Economies: The Case of Brazil Symposium on Competition Law and Policy in Developing Countries

The objective of this article is to discuss the implementation of competition policy in Brazil through a historical perspective. In contrast with the experience of various OECD countries, including the United States in particular, competition policy in Brazil has only recently become relevant. However, its increasing prevalence has not been preceded by the development of a competition culture and institutions. This fact has several implications for policy making.

Best practices in the OECD countries cannot be automatically imported without due attention to the peculiarities of a developing economy. This paper is divided into five sections. Section II describes the different phases of competition policy in Brazil. Section III underlines the structural transformations of the economy as well as the international circumstances that made competition policy relevant.

Section IV discusses the challenges and peculiarities of implementing competition policy in a developing economy. Section V describes how Brazil has coped with such challenges. Section VI contains the major conclusions.