This is a very promising book, devoted mainly to U.K. and EEC law, but with some reference to the experience in the U.S. After a short economic introduction, nearly half the book is devoted to the law providing control over the creation and exercise of market power, and the rest to various kinds of practices: cartels, vertical agreements, price discrimination, exclusionary practices by those with market power, mergers and so forth. At this stage, considerably more economic argument is introduced.

The introductory chapter explains the theory of perfect competition and the unlikely conditions in which it operates. I am not sure, however, that a lawyer unfamiliar with economics would grasp why a monopolist restricts production to raise prices. Much lucid writing by both writers identified with the University of Chicago and their critics is cited, but there is little space to consider their views. The thinking from Germany has been more influential in the common market, but is not described by Whish, any more than in other works in English of which I know. The model used is largely static and Posner’s suggestion that efforts to acquire market power may well exhaust resources up to the whole of the anticipated monopoly profit is not mentioned. On that view, the higher prices obtained by the monopolist may be wasted in restricting competition, and not merely amount to a transfer from buyers to the monopolist. This would be a more serious loss to society than the mis-allocation caused by less of the monopolised products being produced.

The analysis of the law in some 250 pages is lucid and pretty accurate. Many critical articles are cited, but at this stage the reasons for the legal provisions are seldom given. At p. 47, for