Can competition be effective in the midst of unemployment and company closures?

And so here I am this morning trying to answer a very weighty and forthright question: Can competition be effective in the midst of unemployment and company closures? It is tempting to respond with a quick and unequivocal “Yes”. I have instead chosen to wrestle a bit with this question in order to get clarity as to what it is in fact about.

Could to conference organisers’ concern be “effective competition” in the technical sense i.e. as policy makers and subject specialists will conceptualise it? In other words, can we have meaningful competition in product and input markets when unemployment is high and business closures are fairly common place events? Alternatively, could their concern rather be the effectiveness of competition in stimulating innovation, productivity growth, competitiveness, economic growth, diversification, employment, job-quality and poverty reduction? I hope we all agree that there is a world of difference between the two perspectives. Fortunately, we can, and in my view should, deal with both without separating them.