Maurice Stucke, a UT Law professor and former trial attorney with the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and Oxford University Faculty of Law Professor Ariel Ezrachi were recently invited by the United Kingdom’s House of Lords to submit comments related to its hearing “Online Platforms and the EU Digital Single Market.”
Stucke and Ezrachi posted their submission to SSRN last week, basing it on joint research, which explores the effects Big Data and technology have on competition dynamics. Their submission reviews the use of technology to facilitate collusion, conscious parallelism, and unilateral price discrimination as well as the effects of online and mobile platforms. It also addresses the following issues:
- What role does data play in the business model of online platforms?
- Can data-driven online platforms have excessive market power?
- If so, how can they abuse this power?
- If so, how does this happen and what effect does it create?
- Is European competition law able adequately to address abuse by online platforms?
Ezrachi will testify at the House of Lords this week.