Digital Platforms: Antitrust or Regulation?

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Today we’re bringing you the audio from a recent webinar we held on Antitrust.

Antitrust and other regulatory authorities around the world are busily assessing potential enforcement actions against big digital platforms, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon, among others.

The panel addresses the following questions:

• Should governments establish regulations that sets clear rules of conduct for digital platforms?
• Can existing “consumer welfare” standards guiding antitrust enforcement effectively curb abuses by digital platforms?
• Are proposals to heighten antitrust prohibitions and reverse antitrust burdens of proof de facto regulation?

If you’d like to contact a scholar involved in this episode, please email mercatusoutreach@mercatus.gmu.edu.

Don Boudreaux, Senior Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics here at Mercatus will be moderating this panel of leading antitrust scholars, regulators, and practitioners to address these timely questions about digital platforms.

Meet the panel:

• Alden Abbott, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
• Scott Hemphill, Moses H. Grossman Professor of Law at New York University
• John Yun, Associate Professor of Law, Scalia Law School at George Mason University
• Nicolas Petit, Joint Chair in Competition Law at the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute
• Aurelien Portuese, Director of Antitrust and Innovation Policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation