About Competition in Digital Markets, Professional Qualification - at Barcelona School of Economics

The digital sector has become pervasive in our economies, and has transformed our lives in many (mostly positive) respects. But there are increasing concerns that competition in digital markets does not work properly, leading to the creation of dominant platforms with persistent market power. This in in turn may make it difficult for rivals to challenge the position of the incumbents and may not deliver to consumers the benefits that a truly open market would provide. Antitrust authorities have investigated (and sanctioned) some practices adopted by these dominant platforms, but there is also a debate on the extent to which competition law may be able to intervene, and how.

This course offers the opportunity to understand how the digital economy works, and under what conditions competition may not function as it should in this sector. It provides participants with a thorough understanding of how to evaluate the substitutability between different offerings and when to view practices such as tying, exclusive contracts, price-parity clauses, and discriminatory access to platforms as anti-competitive (but also explain in what circumstances they are likely to be beneficial). It also offers a framework to address mergers and acquisitions of smaller and/or potential competitors, to evaluate their possible anti-competitive and pro-competitive effects and to identify when they should be approved and when not. The course includes a review of a number of high-profile cases of abuse of dominance and anti-competitive agreements, from the older Microsoft and Intel cases, to more recent cases involving online travel agencies, e-books, Google, and Qualcomm. We shall also discuss several mergers in the digital sector.

The Barcelona GSE Intensive Course on Competition in Digital Markets will provide participants (whether lawyers or economists, working for firms or in agencies) with a thorough understanding of the most recent economic theories, will help them apply these concepts in practice, and will review actual cases in the light of those theories. The program’s faculty includes leading international competition scholars and practitioners with extensive experience of the application of economic techniques to competition cases in this area.

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Entry requirements for this course

Contact Barcelona School of Economics to find course entry requirements.

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