Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Trade Regulation, New York University School of Law. B.A., 1956, Vassar College; LL.B., 1961, New York University.
In this Essay, Professor Eleanor Fox analyzes regulatory competition and regulatory federalism with respect to competition law. In considering whether some degree of higher-than-national-level regulation is wise Fox observes possible races to the bottom and the top, as well as the race to be the model for the world. She then analyzes regulatory disregard: the tendency of national systems and their actors to disregard their neighbors and to disregard the problem of excessively overlapping regulatory systems. Professor Fox concludes that there is a modest and marginal race to the bottom; that there is also a race to the top; that there is little competition as such among competition regimes to attract investment, but there is competition between the United States and the European Union to export competition law models to the rest of the world; and that in view of nationalistic races and regulatory disregard, there is a case for the internationalization of certain specific procedures and principles.
