Fostering Competition Culture in the Emerging Economies: The Brazilian Experience

The lack of competition culture is one of the keys factors which undermine the enforcement of the competition law in an emerging economy. The lack of competition culture may only be 'cured' through activities of competition advocacy vis-a-vis the different stakeholders: State's agencies, regulators, business community and consumers' association. The paper analyzes this broad issue through a case study on the Brazilian experience in the field of competition advocacy. During the last years Brazil sensibly progressed in the enforcement of the competition law, and one of the reasons of this development was the functions of competition advocacy carried out by the Brazilian competition authority. The paper argues that the Brazilian success was mainly due to the institutional framework provided by the Brazilian competition act, which splits the activities of enforcement and of competition advocacy between two different agencies. While a fully independent authority enforces the competition law, an advisory body part of the Ministry of the Economy monitors the anti-competitive regulations adopted by other State agencies. The conclusions provide a number of lessons applicable to other emerging economies which have recently started to enforce a competition law regime.