Professor Rupprecht Podszun of the Heinrich Heine Universitat Dusseldorf discusses Industrial policy, politics and the philosophical underpinnings of German competition law and why it's likely to be influential across Europe.

Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian offers a range of views from general topics such as the role of economics and populism in antitrust and the standards that should apply to antitrust interventions, to specific issues raised by the European Commission’s decisions against Google in the Shopping and Android cases and debates about privacy and data protection.

Professor Ioannis Lianos of University College London explains why he considers there to be serious risks to the integrity of academic research as a result of undisclosed funding by large tech companies.

In this episode of Competition Lore Dr Wendy Ng, a specialist in the political economy of Chinese competition law at the University of Melbourne, shares her insights on the context that shapes the way in which the Anti-Monopoly Law works in China.

On 18 July this year Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition czar, announced a record €4.3 billion fine against Google in relation to various practices concerning Android, the search giant’s popular mobile operating system. In this episode of Competition Lore you’ll hear from Professor Nicolas Petit and Professor Simonetta Vezzoso, two of the many commentators who are dissecting the decision and who have very different views on whether the European Commission got it right.

Professor Michal Gal explains how algorithms make coordination between rivals much easier and more efficient.  She shares her creative thinking on how consumers themselves can use algorithms to counteract the anti-competitive effects.

Professor Colin Bennett, a political scientist who specialises in privacy, from the University of Victoria in Canada explains how the meaning of privacy is highly context-specific, what kinds of value we ascribe to it and how it sometimes bumps up against other competing public interests.

Professor Daniel Sokol is from the University of Florida Levin College of Law and is also an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Danny shares his thoughts on being implicated personally in the campaign against so-called “Google Academics” and discusses what it means to be a modern day scholar with a range of roles inside and outside of academia.

This episode of Competition Lore features Peter Harris, Chairman of the Australian Productivity Commission, one of Australia’s leading public policy thinkers and the architect behind an innovative policy reform, a proposed comprehensive consumer right to data.

Professor Pinar Akman explains why the European Commission’s decision to impose a record €2.42 billion fine on Google should be seen, at best, as novel. She reflects on why the US FTC reached a different view on the same conduct and points out the problems with the remedy of equal treatment with which Google has had to comply.

Geoffrey Manne argues that Big Tech opponents have failed to identify clear harms to consumer welfare and calls for an evidence-based approach using an error-cost framework.  He also questions the wisdom of trying to ‘shoehorn broader social and political concerns into the narrow economic remit of antitrust law’.

Ever thought of your data as currency? When was the last time you read the privacy policy when you signed up to an online service? Who has the time? And what are you going to do if you don’t agree?  Professor Maurice Stucke argues that what we all thought was free, is still actually costing us – it’s just not taking our money. Coining that now pervasive aphorism, in the digital world the currency is data and we may well be handing it over without knowing its true value. This is just one of a...

The digital revolution affecting economies and societies cuts across multiple areas of government policy and is engendering an active dialogue between policymakers. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is playing a key role in advancing this dialogue and no more so than in the area of competition policy. Should governments be regulating powerful data-driven companies? What tools and skills do competition authorities need to protect competition in a digital economy? How...

The way we consume news and media has changed dramatically over the past decade. Print newspapers are almost a thing of nostalgia and few of us wait to sit down in front of a television just to see what’s happening. Digital platforms are replacing media empires. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission is conducting an inquiry into the effect that digital search engines, social media and content aggregators have on media and advertising. Rod Sims is the Chairman of the ACCC – a...

Many of us use the term "platform" on a daily basis to describe businesses that we connect with online. But when and how does a business act as a platform? And what difference does this make to platform users, whether as consumers or other businesses that sell or advertise products and services on it? Professor Dick Schmalensee has been studying platforms since at least the 1980s. He says the simplest definition of a platform is a business that brings different sides together. It's an old...

There has been vigorous debate about the concentration of market power in super-platforms like Google and Facebook. Do we have the policy tools to preserve competition? What are the implications of increasingly powerful data-opolies? The new economy has led some scholars to question the economic theories that have underpinned competition policy since the '80s, and in some parts of the world, politicians and policymakers are taking notice. One of the clearest voices challenging the orthodoxy...

Featuring regular cut-through interviews with leading thinkers, movers and shakers, Competition Lore is a podcast series that engages us all in a debate about the transformative potential and risks of digitalised competition. Join Caron Beaton-Wells, Professor in Competition Law at the University of Melbourne, to tackle what it means to participate as a competitor, consumer or citizen in a digital economy and society.