Economic and legal reasoning in competition law decisions

Creation of competition rules is based on economic thoughts, and therefore economics as a scientific discipline is an unavoidable partner for competition law. At the same time, economic knowledge plays an important role in the interpretation of competition rules. The highest authority that interprets European competition law is the Court of Justice of the EU. It is thus vital to understand how this institution works with economic knowledge and what economic arguments it uses within reasoning of its decisions. An economic argument, however, is not only an argument based on complex calculations, statistical data or theoretical models. An economic argument included in a competition law judgment is a type of a legal argument with an economic content based on economic causality between economically relevant aspects of behaviour and consequences of such a behaviour for the society. Studying various forms and quality of economic arguments used in competition case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU could show us that the way how the CJEU works with economic arguments influences administrability of European competition law.