A Code of Conduct on Restrictive Business Practices: A Third Option

Abstract

Competing Goals in Formulating a Code of Conduct on Restrictive Business PracticesFor the past thirty years efforts to formulate and implement acceptable international norms to regulate restrictive business practices (R.B.P.’s) affecting international trade have largely failed. Yet, none can deny the necessity of such international norms in the face of the inability of national legal systems to cope with an economic order of international dimensions. The abortive International Trade Organization, as part of the Havana Charter of 1948, and the Draft E.C.O.S.O.C. International Agreement of 1953, which were originally initiated by the United States, were eventually rejected by it because “the various national policies, legislation, and enforcement procedures in this field were not sufficiently comparable.”