Abstract

Summary Economic interdependencies between environmental and antitrust policies belong to areas which have never been discussed sufficiently although nobody would neglect the theoretical existence of such relations. The German antilead legislation has been in effect for several years now and thus offers the opportunity to evaluate whether there have been competitive impacts or why such effects did not occur. The study shows that because of some particular developments in the mineral oil market competitive impacts have only played an unimportant role. The existence of these particular developments worked in favour of the process of adjustment to the changing economic environment. When these particular developments vanished, this adjustment process was nearly completed. It can be concluded for environmental policy as a whole that the design of environmental measures should not only concentrate on how strong measures should be but also on the most appropriate time to intervene