Competition Lore Podcast

Digitalisation has transformed the advertising industry.  Not only are advertisers now able to target consumers to a far greater extent than was possible with traditional advertising, but they are also able to track and assess the performance of their ads in ways previously unimaginable.

What makes this all possible is the treasure trove of data that we, as consumers, generate with our inexhaustible digital footprints. But does it necessarily mean that the firms with the largest data-sets hold substantial power in advertising markets?

That is a question being studied by policymakers and competition authorities around the world and it’s one on which minds clearly differ.

In this episode we are joined by Catherine Tucker, Professor of Management Science and Marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  Catherine shares her insights from years of empirical research into advertising and the tools and techniques that make it effective. 

The diagram depicting the complex digital advertising eco-system to which Catherine refers in the episode can be found here, and if you would like to learn more about Catherine’s research, her publications are on SSRN. Her disclosure statement can be read here.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An expert panel appointed by the UK government has recently released its report on changes to competition policy to help unlock the opportunities of the digital economy.

One of the co-authors, Professor Philip Marsden, describes it as a “quintessentially British” contribution to the global debate on whether we need adjustments to the law and/or regulation to deal with the competition challenges posed by power in digital markets.

As a former enforcer at the UK Competition and Markets Authority, current Deputy Chairman of the Enforcement Decisions Committee of the Bank of England, Member of the Financial Conduct Authority/PSR Competition Decisions Committee
and Member of the OFGEM Enforcement Decisions Panel, Philip looks at these issues through both practical and academic lenses.  In the episode he shares the key findings and recommendations of the report and explains why he hopes it will provide the cut-through sorely needed in a noisy and polarized discourse.

The report is available here and I also recommend you read Philip’s recent contributions to Competition Policy International:

Who Should Trust-Bust? Hippocrates not Hipsters, 2018

Leave, Remain & Common Ground: Pragmatism in Dealing with Tech Giants, 2019

You can also follow Philip on Twitter @drphilipmarsden.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just over a decade after a financial crisis that shook the world, regulators have worked over time to move the financial system from the brink of chaos back to safe ground. But while the preoccupation has been with financial stability, in many countries, it has not been good news for competition.

Technological developments and data innovations have opened up more choice and new ways of banking for consumers. Nevertheless, many see Fintech as falling short of a serious challenge to the traditional incumbents. 

In the meantime, governments too have been making concerted moves to empower consumers through open banking initiatives.

All this though may pale in comparison to the looming and some might say present threat that Big Tech poses to Big Banking. In this episode our guest is Dr Jorge Padilla, Head of Compass Lexecon Europe and a highly credentialled and respected antitrust economist.

Jorge shares his reflections on the state of the global banking industry today and why he regards it as ripe for disruption by the major digital platforms.  We also explore what types of regulatory measures would be required to ensure a level playing field for competition between banks and their new rivals as well as to shore up financial stability.

I highly recommend Jorge’s paper on Big Tech Banking which you can read here.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The advent of algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence have led some to argue that we are living in an age of “mass personalisation”.  While the benefits of these technological advances are largely self-evident, there is a growing chorus of alarm.  Concerns include increased risks of consumer manipulation, discrimination, loss of diversity and ultimately a loss of autonomy or the capacity to choose.

Are we being suckered on a scale never seen before and how should consumer laws and regulation respond?  Are there responses that provide adequate consumer protection while at the same time not stifling the competition and innovation from which we all benefit?

These questions are explored in this episode with Professor Jeannie Paterson of the University of Melbourne Law School. Jeannie is researching the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on consumer choice and decision-making and is the co-convenor of the University’s Digital Citizens Research Network.

If you would like to read her recent think piece on combatting bias and discrimination in AI, you will find it here.

In the episode Jeannie refers to research on consumer attitudes towards data collection and sharing conducted by the Consumer Policy Research Centre.  You can read more about the research here.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neither the law nor economics are value-neutral sciences. If we are to understand why and how competition laws operate in a certain way in an individual jurisdiction, we need to understand the underlying values and belief systems that inform and shape its design and enforcement.

In this episode, we are joined by Slaughter & May Professor of Competition Law and Director of the Centre for Competition Law and Policy at the University of Oxford, Ariel Ezrachi.

Ariel shares his insights on the values that underpin European competition policy and law, the ways in which they inform the pluralistic objectives of the law and affect its enforcement.  In the course of the discussion, not surprisingly, the Bundeskartellamt’s decision in relation to Facebook’s data practices comes up.

Here are two of Ariel’s recent papers in which you can read more of his thinking on these issues:

EU Competition Law Goals and the Digital Economy, 2018

Sponge, 2016

Other papers by Ariel, many relevant to issues raised by competition in digital markets, can be found here. And I highly recommend his recent book, co-authored with one of our other guests on the podcast, Professor Maurice Stucke (episodes 1 and 5), Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm Driven Economy (HUP, 2016).

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this final (for now) episode in our series on blockchain, we move beyond the economic and legal analysis to consider whether this technology might inform and be part of a broader movement for political and social change.

We are joined by Glen Weyl, founder and Chairman of the RadicalxChange Foundation, Principal Researcher at Microsoft and Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

He is co-author with Eric Posner of the radical book, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, a blueprint for upending and replacing many of the institutions that underpin our current economic and political systems so as to create a fairer, more equal and more democratic society.

In a highly thought provoking discussion, co-hosted with Dr Thibault Schrepel (our guest on episodes 23 and 24), Glen explains some of the core ideas in his writing and relates them to his critique of the current state of the blockchain industry.

For Glen, the decentralised vision of blockchain falls far short of the reality. But he sees the vision as valuable nevertheless in inspiring us to think about how distributed data structures and mathematical technologies might be harnessed in re-imagining the type of society in which we want to live.

You can find out more about Glen and his work on his website. And here is the joint paper with Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum) referred to in the episode, Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design For Philanthropic Matching Funds.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Blockchain technology and smart contracts hold some promise for reinvigorating competition, providing more efficient and secure ways of doing business on the internet, while at the same time lifting the bar in data protection and privacy.

But is this new general purpose technology all that it’s made out to be? Will it challenge the power of the major digital platforms?  And what are the risks that blockchain itself will become concentrated and fall prey to anti-competitive conduct?

In this episode, Dr Thibault Schrepel, Assistant Professor at the Utrecht University School of Law, takes on these challenging questions. Much of the discussion assumes a basic understanding of blockchain technology. So for those who are fairly new to the topic, you may find it useful to listen first to our Blockchain primer in episode 23.

You can also find Thibault on his innovative website, Concurrentialiste, or follow him on Twitter @LeConcurrential, and I highly recommend his recent blockchain papers:

Is Blockchain the death of Antitrust Law? The Blockchain Antitrust Paradox, 2018

Collusion by Blockchain and Smart Contracts, 2019.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Blockchain is not just bitcoin. It’s a general purpose technology that some say has the potential to revolutionise swathes of the economy, creating a new, more efficient, more secure way to exchange information and value.

But just as was true of the early days of the internet, a real understanding of blockchain technology eludes many of us, making it difficult to think meaningfully about its promise and its pitfalls.

In this episode we are joined by Dr Thibault Schrepel, Assistant Professor at the Utrecht University School of Law. Thibault has made blockchain and its antitrust implications his specialty and in this episode, he walks us through the nuts and bolts of the technology.

Having graduated from Blockchain 101, in the next episode, join Thibault and me in a discussion about why blockchain is causing so much excitement but at the same time is likely to pose challenges for competition law enforcement.

You can also find Thibault on his innovative website, Concurrentialiste, or follow him on Twitter @LeConcurrential.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump’s frequent railings about “fake news” have gone viral, possibly even more so than the so-called “fake news” itself.

For some, however, the proliferation of fake news on digital platforms is a serious problem. And many are asking whether it is a problem caused by the power of Facebook and Google over when, where and how we consume news.

This episode investigates the meaning of the now often used, if not abused, term “fake news”. It explores whether this is a phenomenon that relates to competition and, if so, whether it is a reflection of too little competition, or indeed, too much. 

The episode features observations and insights from various commentators.  If you would like to listen to the full accounts, you can find them as follows:

Donald Trump

Vergel Santos, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility

Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners

Craig Silverman, BuzzFeed

Sally Hubbard, Capitol Forum

Mark Thompson, New York Times

Tim Wu, Columbia Law School

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Facebook has been taking fire on a host of fronts from governments and regulators around the world.  One of the latest to take aim is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in its Inquiry into Digital Platforms and their impact on media and advertising sectors.

In episode 20 of the podcast Dr Katherine Kemp explained the key findings and recommendations in the ACCC’s preliminary report, in which the Commission proposed changes to merger review and increased regulatory scrutiny as responses to Google and Facebook’s dominance of search, social media, advertising and news referral services markets.

In this episode, Facebook’s Associate General Counsel, Competition, Sam Knox explains why the social media giant regards many of the findings to be flawed and why the proposed new measures are either misguided or may in fact harm consumers.

The Inquiry website, with links to the Preliminary report and submissions, can be found here.

By way of postscript to the episode, in yet more bad news for Facebook, the German competition authority has decided that its fusion of data sets from across different services constitutes an exploitative abuse of dominance and has made orders for data separation in the absence of user consent.  The Bundeskartellamt’s decision is here and Facebook’s initial response here.

Aside from assisting in setting up the interview, Facebook had no other input to the production of this episode.

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.

Competition Lore is produced by Written & Recorded.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.