Interview with Tommaso Valletti: the Digital Markets Act, Economics of Antitrust, Experts as Agents
00:00 Introduction
01:18 What is good and bad in the final version of the DMA?
03:07 Giving competition a chance
06:15 Urgent need to recalibrate merger control
09:30 How effective would collaboration between DG COMP & DG CONNECT in enforcing the DMA be?
10:11 Which of DGs is a bit more proactive in regulating?
13:15 Budgetary constraints
16:00 The role of software engineers & data scientists
16:15 Two normative visions of the DMA: Niccolo Machiavelli vs. Tommaso Campanella
19:00 Compliance model vs Strategic model of DMA enforcement
21:55 Ultimate benchmark of success is change in mentality not only of regulators but also gatekeepers
23:05 The future of the Internet and the problem of concentration
24:00 Internet Renaissance vs. Internet Reconquista visions
27:55 Reestablishing the competitive process
29:35 Concentration, competition and political democracy
31:10 The issue of efficiency in digital markets
32:40 Structural presumptions
33:30 Big Tech and privacy: from villain to guardians metamorphosis and what should we do with it
36:35 Interagency and interdisciplinary dialogue (and pitfalls)
39:10 The future of competition law, economics and policy
42:05 Changing dramatically the focus, not waisting too much time on too vague issues
45:20 The problem of experts (claiming to make objective reading of law, economics and facts) acting as agents for defendants
49:30 A real-life example of how "creative" the agents-experts may be in disproving the obvious
55:10 Expert knowledge is not about making things more technical (claiming that the truth is in details, discoverable only by these means)
56:30 Brilliant example of how to and how not to interrogate experts (a story about reductio ad absurdum)
Tommaso Valletti, Professor of Economics at Imperial College London, the Head of the Department of Economics & Public Policy at Imperial College Business School, Non-Executive Director to the board of the Financial Conduct Authority, the Director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Research and Policy Network on Competition Policy. Tommaso Valletti was the Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission (Directorate General for Competition) between 2016 and 2019.
We discussed Tommaso's views on the #DMA and the development of competition law, economics and policy. We also looked at the role of competition economics and experts in judicial proceedings.
The Digital Markets Research Hub is an independent academic initiative aiming at scrutinising the functioning of competition/regulation in digital markets. We host one-to-one interviews with the leading thinkers, policymakers, regulators and practitioners. We also organise online mini-workshops inviting high-profile experts in various fields of digital competition law & policy to discuss the most vibrant issues of the ongoing regulatory reforms in digital markets.
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#antitrust #competition #EU law #digital.markets.act