In a world where goods, services, people, ideas and money increasingly disregard national borders and are transferred across them rapidly, incompatible national practices and standards are now widely viewed as counterproductive. These developments call into question the domestic nature of competition rules and the absence of binding rules at the international level and increase the momentum towards harmonization-- or convergence--of competition laws and polices.

In past there have been many attempts to establish rule on anticompetitive conduct at the international level. But those efforts so far have failed to develop acceptable common principles or rules that spanned national boundaries. Currently OECD is carrying out significant work in establishing comprehensive multilateral principles and standards for the application and enforcement of competition policies and has adopted recommendations.

The purposes of this study are fourfold- first to analyze the historical and theoretical background of harmonizing or convergence of different competition laws and polices among countries, second to investigate idiosyncrasies of competition rules in leading jurisdictions, third to offer prospects of devising world competition rule, fourth to examine its implications to Korea competition laws.