Virtual competition

The Centre for Law and Economics at the UCL Faculty of Laws
invites you to a presentation by

Professor Ariel Ezrachi, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, and
Professor Maurice Stucke, University of Tennessee and Konkurrenz Group

Virtual Competition

chaired by
Dr Florian Wagner-von Papp, UCL Laws, Co-Director of the Centre for Law & Economics

The presentation is based on the issues discussed in Professors Ezrachi’s and Stucke’s new book “Virtual Competition”

How competitive is our market economy? Not as much as it ought to be. And the growth of big data threatens to make things even worse. Antitrust regulators already struggle to keep markets competitive. How will they fare in a world where intelligent pricing algorithms subtly collude with one another or engage in advanced behavioural discrimination? In their new book, Virtual Competition (HUP) Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke explore the changing competition dynamic brought about by the digital economy and consider the possible darker side to the growth in digital commerce.

Featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Times, Times Higher Education, The Observer, Science, Harvard Business Review, Wired, The New Yorker and other major outlets,their work is helping shape the debate on big data, big analytics and competition law. They have presented their work to — and their work has been cited by — competition officials and agencies in the US and EU, the UK House of Lords, UNCTAD, and the OECD.

Barry Nalebuff (Science): ‘We owe the authors our deep gratitude for anticipating and explaining the consequences of living in a world in which black boxes collude and leave no trails behind. They make it clear that in a world of big data and algorithmic pricing, consumers are outgunned and antitrust laws are out-dated, especially in the United States. They want their readers to agitate for new anti-trust laws. Sign me up. When the masses get mad enough, perhaps they’ll elect a new trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt for the digital era. In the meantime, we can hope the ideas discussed in Virtual Competition get on the political agenda’

About the speakers

Ariel Ezrachi is the Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law at the University of Oxford and the Director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. He routinely advises competition authorities, law firms, and multi-national firms on competition issues, and develops training and capacity building programmes in competition law and policy for the private and public sectors. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (OUP) and the author, editor and co-editor of numerous books, including – Virtual Competition (2016, Harvard), EU Competition Law, An Analytical Guide to the Leading Cases (5th ed, 2016, Hart), Global Antitrust and Compliance Handbook (2014, OUP), Intellectual Property and Competition Law (2011, OUP) and Criminalising Cartels: Critical Studies of an International Regulatory Movement (2011, Hart).

Maurice E. Stucke is a co-founder of the law firm, the Konkurrenz Group, and a law professor at the University of Tennessee. With twenty years experience handling a range of competition policy issues in both private practice and as a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice, he advises governments, law firms, consumer groups, and multi-national firms on competition and privacy issues. Professor Stucke serves as one of the United States’ non-governmental advisors to the International Competition Network, as a Senior Fellow at the American Antitrust Institute, and on the boards of the Academic Society for Competition Law and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies. He recently co-authored two books, Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy (Harvard University Press 2016) and Big Data and Competition Policy (Oxford University Press 2016). Professor Stucke received a number of awards including a Fulbright fellowship to teach at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.