This short article serves as an introduction to Thibault Schrepel’s latest working paper, “Being an Arthurian: Complexity Economics, Law, and Science” (open-access) *** Complexity science provides a general framework for approaching all fields of science. Unlike other scientific methods, complexity looks at how multiple interactions between agents (be they humans, insects, animals, companies, etc.) create a...Read More
On June 27, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced proposed changes to Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (“HSR Act”) premerger notification form. Less than a month later, on July 19, the FTC and Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced proposed changes to the agencies’ joint merger guidelines. These proceedings are closely related, both part of the Biden administration’s...Read More
Dear readers, the Network Law Review is delighted to present you with this month’s guest article by Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School. She recently published her new book Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology. **** Momentum for regulating Big Tech is growing across the world. The European Union...Read More
Dear readers, the Network Law Review is delighted to present you with this month’s guest article by Luc Soete, Dean of Brussels School of Governance, Free University of Brussels (VUB) and Emeritus Professor, Maastricht University, and Sven Van Kerckhoven, Vice-Dean, of Brussels School of Governance and Research Professor European Economic Governance, Free University of Brussels (VUB). ****...Read More
Welcome to Crane’s Cartel, a trimonthly series where University of Michigan law professor Daniel Crane engages in hard-core mind-fixing. **** On July 19, the FTC and DOJ released the draft Merger Guidelines for public comment. Among the many headlines is the displacement by case law of formal economic analysis that had characterized former guidelines. The draft...Read More
I will start with the standard neoclassical economics that I was brought up on. It is very much based on mathematics, and to make the mathematics work we are forced to make many simplifying assumptions. In nearly all models that we look at with standard neoclassical economics we are using equation-based mathematics, and we tend...Read More
There is little doubt that all of the sectors where Competition Policy is commonly enforced exhibit some dynamic characteristic, be it because of investments, innovation, network effects, switching costs or, more simply, entry and exit. Some of these features have long been incorporated into our standard approaches. However, a large number of academics, policy-makers or...Read More
Successful executives have a keen sense of the radical uncertainties they face. This recognition of uncertainty is what pushed them to invent self-consciously co-evolving communities of businesses. By creating self-conscious communities, a group of business leaders could make a kind of shared island of strategic cooperation. (...)Read More
Given recent developments in the digital space, one could be forgiven to think that regulators have embarked on an extensive exercise of platform design targeting the largest players in online services. Regulatory provisions in the EU and many of the remedial actions from competition investigations are limiting the ability of large platforms to operate as...Read More
The ‘open early, closed late’ strategy is taking a heavy toll on consumers in the digital economy. The pure case of ‘open early, closed late’ occurs when a digital platform imposes prices after a period of free and unlimited supply. More generally, ‘open early, closed late’ encompasses broader forms of consumer exploitation, like when Netflix,...Read More
This brief contribution will focus on three aspects of the topic we are supposed to address. Firstly, I’ll try to provide a tentative definition of dynamic industries/markets, identifying their main characteristics. Secondly, I’ll emphasize the main challenges raised by dynamic industries for market definition and, hence, for the assessment of market power. Finally, I’ll provide...Read More
Examining regulatory responses to technological advancements reveals a recurring pattern. Technological innovation often paves the way for widespread commercialization and adoption. Yet, in some instances, the large-scale implementation of a technology unveils unforeseen drawbacks that cannot be predicted or thoroughly tested in controlled lab environments. As time progresses, the negative effects of these technologies become...Read More
This session is about ecosystems and managers. One can interpret that in many ways. I want to interpret it in a way that is not perhaps what the organizers had in mind: I want to argue that ecosystems and managers are substitutes for one another. All too often, we tend to think of dynamic competition...Read More
Over the last couple of years, a “new conventional wisdom” (Shapiro, 2018) has emerged: there is evidence of a widespread increase in market concentration in both the U.S. and the EU economies over the last few decades. Because higher level of market concentration may reflect greater firm market power, this has fuelled concern that competition...Read More
Sometimes, to understand where we are, we must first understand where we came from. The Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) is the outcome of a long reflection process that was informed by the Commission’s own antitrust enforcement experience, as well as by the realisation that some issues related to features of the digital economy were of...Read More
