Rio de Janeiro Law School professor publishes book on Regulation and Competition

A professor at FGV's Rio de Janeiro Law School, Patricia Sampaio, will launch the book Regulação e Concorrência: a atuação do CADE em setores de infraestrutura? (Regulation and Competition: the role of CADE in infrastructure sectors) on March 19 at 5 pm, at Saraiva Bookstore, in Rio de Janeiro downtown. From a broad survey of the performance of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), the work raises a discussion about the best legal and institutional organization to safeguard the competition in infrastructure regulated sectors.The author, Patrícia Sampaio, thoroughly evaluated CADE's jurisprudence in the segments of transmission and distribution of electricity, roads, railways, ports, airports, fixed telephone services, sanitation, transport and gas distribution. From experiences in the U.S. and the European Union, Patrícia suggests that the powers of regulatory agencies and the CADE should be complementary in order to obtain better results in the application of competition law to regulated industries.The interaction between regulatory and competitive authorities before the issue of the regulation in infrastructure sectors can be extremely valuable to the development of public policies that are pro-competitive, avoiding the unnecessary creation or reinforcement of entry barriers through regulatory standards, said Patrícia.In order to intensify the dialogue between regulatory and competition authorities, the work also highlights the importance of institutional mechanisms for this interaction - e.g., public hearings and the Regulatory Impact Analysis. Finally, if there are conflicts of competence or understandings between regulators and CADE, the work discusses who is responsible for settling them.