Abstract: Competition law’s prohibition on price fixing and related horizontal agreements is one of
its few uncontroversial provisions and is understood to be well grounded in economic principles
that are taken to provide the foundation for competition policy. Upon examination, however,
commonly offered views of the law’s conception of agreement prove to be difficult to articulate
in an operational manner, at odds with key aspects of legal doctrine and practice, and unrelated
to core elements of modern oligopoly theory. This Article explores these and other features of
the agreement requirement and suggests the need for a wholesale revision of how competition
law should approach the oligopoly problem.