Season 3, Episode 8: What's the purpose of a competition regulator? (with Tom Fish)

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Tom Fish, the Head of Public Policy and Research at Gener8, a data empowerment platform for consumers. Tom is also the Director of Policy at the Coalition for Online Data Empowerment, an advocacy group.

But prior to these roles, Tom was an Assistant Director at the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has taken an active role in competition regulation related to technology firms, which is the subject of our conversation. In our discussion, Tom spoke in a personal capacity that doesn't necessarily reflect the views of the CMA.

In this episode, Tom and I discuss:

• The purpose and role of the CMA;
• How the CMA is able to influence mergers between foreign companies or proposed policy changes from foreign companies;
• Why the CMA has taken on such prominence with situations involving American firms recently;
• Whether any sense of momentum or harmonization goes into decisions from competition authorities;
• How the need for competition regulation in the digital ecosystem changed over time;
• How competition regulators view "success" with respect to competition regulation and whether they have a clear idea of what kind of society-level impact they want to effectuate;
• What competition authorities generally do well when it comes to digital markets and what they do poorly.

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