Book Reviews

• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7301800409
• Published date: 01 December 1973
• Author: Corwin D. Edwards
• Date: 01 December 1973
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

United Nations Conference on

Trade

and Development, Re-

strictive Business Practices, Studies on the United King-

dom of Great Britain and Northern Island, the United

States, and Japan, New York: United Nations (1973),108

pp.,

$3.00.

This publication contains three of the "country studies"

that

underlie the reports on restrictive business practices

that

were made by the secretariat of the United Nations Con-

ference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1971 and

1972. (These reports were reprinted in the spring of 1972

in volume

III,

no. 4, of the Journal

of

Reprints for

Antitrust

Law and Economics.) Studies for other countries

than

those

published here, as listed in the introduction to the 1972 report,

pertain

to India and the Philippines (already published) and

to Australia, the

Federal

Republic of Germany, Mexico, and

Pakistan

(not yet published in

June

1973).

The studies thus

far

made public differ from one another

because of differences in the information available in the

various countries and the institutional

and

legal settings

that

have affected the focus of

that

information. Such differences

are

evident in this publication. All of the three countries

covered here, however,

are

alike in possessing substantial

antitrust

legislation

that

has been operative for two decades

or longer, whereas in some of the other countries, with smaller

antitrust

roots, information has emerged chiefly from analyses

of controls upon investment by foreign enterprises.

In

the present publication, the study of

Japan,

prepared

by the UNCTAD secretariat and relatively brief, consists

primarily of summations of laws, of official statements of

policy,

and

of the number and

nature

of legally exempted re-

strictive arrangements. The studies of the

UK

and the US,

with only slight analysis of the underlying laws, focus upon

various types of

private

restrictions

that

are

relevant to the

interests of developing countries

and

that

have been investi-

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