The paper aims to evaluate the efficacy of competition policy interventions, keeping agents from adopting non-competitive strategies. Using the Anticompetitive Prevention Commitment (a competition policy mechanism instituted by Law 8.884), the Brazilian Antitrust System tried to protect competition in the Brazilian orange sector, keeping the prevailing market structure. The research is based on the industrial organization literature, for defining the conditions for market power and tacit collusion in the industry, and on Transaction Cost Economics, for the evaluation of governance structure efficiency. It is proposed a framework for the evaluation of the efficacy of competition policy interventions on firm strategies. We apply this framework to the Brazilian Antitrust System intervention on the orange sector, which provides some evidence regarding the efficacy of strategy restrictions. The empirical analysis shows that there were positive effects during four years, followed by the reestablishment of the former situation. The results corroborate the general proposition that interventions on firm strategies have transitory effects if the market structure remains unchanged.
competition policy; orange sector; brazilian antitrust system
