{"id":1206,"date":"2018-09-14T14:20:56","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T12:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2019-10-16T14:59:18","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T12:59:18","slug":"ssnippets-20-daniel-sokol-on-what-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/blog\/2018\/09\/14\/ssnippets-20-daniel-sokol-on-what-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"SSNIPpets (20) \u2013 Daniel Sokol on what to read"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems that the EU\u2013US \u201ctrade war\u201d simply does not happen since people are far too busy making money instead of answering a call to arms. As pacifists (if not money makers), we also look over the Atlantic to our friends to find out what we can learn from the oldest but one<\/a> antitrust regime in the world. We are happy that Professor Daniel Sokol gives us some ideas, and it does not take us by surprise that he focuses on the future \u2013 on technology. Here are his SSNIPpets: small, but significant news, information and pleasantries \u2013 our pet project!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for the opportunity to serve as a guest blogger. Let me start with a general theme for this post. Lots of antitrust\/competition law scholarship has turned to interesting questions of technology and online markets. Some research questions go to issues of market definition and market power. Other scholarship has turned to issues of online vertical restraints such as selective distribution in online settings, online MFNs and RPM, abuse of dominance, Fintech and competition, Big Data, and AI related collusion. There are too many papers now out to provide even a representative sample. This is an exciting turn for the field, one that owes its \u201cmodern\u201d origin to the Microsoft<\/em> case but an emphasis that has become more pronounced in the past five or so years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reading European papers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Given this interest in the interface of competition law and technology relating to online platforms, some things really surprise me about the scholarship. A number of papers that I read among European competition law scholars don\u2019t really engage with the underlying economics of the behavior or merger. From someone accustomed to all papers among US and Canadian competition law scholars engaging at some level with economic analysis (some more than others), this development strikes me as odd. Ultimately, competition law serves to regulate business behavior against unlawful actions that distort markets. Misunderstand (or neglect) the underlying economics and it becomes very difficult to craft an effective legal rule or a legal intervention against anti-competitive behavior.<\/p>\n

Why is there this lack of focus? There are a number of reasons. First, the law and economics tradition is far more fundamental to US law schools than European ones. People with advanced training in economics exist at many schools in the United States and a number of students come with backgrounds in economics and other related fields such as finance. You find less of this in Europe with students beginning law school at 18. This is also a problem for corporate\/company law where students in the United States and Europe sometimes lack basic financial literacy. Schools in the US correct this through specialized courses in finance and accounting as well as \u201cboot camps\u201d. You find less of this in Europe in law schools.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just academia, though<\/strong><\/h2>\n

However, some of the lack of economic analysis in European scholarship is a difference regarding decision-makers. I blame in part a very legalistic approach to case analysis and the use of economic expertise by European courts. Relative to the United States, European courts are less likely to cite articles at all and almost never cite economics articles. In the United States this is common. This is an area where a number of European competition law scholars are making a difference. These include (but are not limited to): Pinar Akman<\/a>, Pablo Ibanez-Colomo, Ariel Ezrachi, Nicolas Petit, Heike Schweitzer<\/a>, and Andreas Stephan among others. However, there are not enough people reading the economics literature.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that law professors need to be economists. However, they should be able to read related literature as many economics theory papers and empirical papers shape ideas and much of the great competition law scholarship has been translating economic insights into legal arguments. The basic point I want to make is that you cannot be a good competition law professor if you don\u2019t have at least a minimal sense of how economics impacts competition law. I think that the same is true for competition lawyers in practice. Economic analysis underlies so much of competition law.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Turn to tech<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Technology related competition law leads to a different problem. My sense is that both North American and European competition law systems (and academics in both jurisdictions) are off for a different reason. If you cannot understand the law without understanding the economics, it is also the case that you cannot understand the economics without understanding the underlying technology. If economic models do not appreciate issues such as technological barriers to entry or how platforms work (to give just two examples), the models will be off and the findings from incorrect models will lead to mistaken conclusions both for theory and empirical work. In this vein, the UK\u2019s CMA is a leader in creating a distinct technology unit to better understand this reality. Kudos to the CMA for leading the world in rethinking how to address technology in a competition authority.<\/p>\n

On the academic side, ask how many competition law articles cite the relevant literature from journals in strategic management, information systems, marketing, and operations management. The answer is very few. This needs to change as many insights from these other fields help competition law professors to better understand technology and its implications for competition law analysis both as a matter of theory and empirics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some suggestions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Whose work do I like from these other disciplines? There are many but let me provide a sampling of people whose work I read:<\/p>\n

Marshall Van Alstyne, Boston University
\nAnandhi Bharadwaj, Emory
\nKevin Boudreau, Northeastern
\nAnthony Dukes, USC
\nChiara Farronato, Harvard Business School
\nAndrey Fradkin, Boston University
\nChris Foreman, Cornell
\nAnnabelle Gawer, University of Surrey
\nAnindya Ghose, NYU
\nAvi Goldfarb, University of Toronto
\nAndrei Hagiu, Boston University
\nAnja Lambrecht, London Business School
\nGeoff Parker, Dartmouth College
\nAnita Rao, University of Chicago
\nMelissa Schilling, NYU
\nRob Seamans, NYU
\nRahul Telang, Carnegie Mellon University
\nKen Wilbur, UCSD
\nFeng Zhu, Harvard Business School
\nYi Zhu, University of Minnesota<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There has been a number of people who have pushed for a more technological based approach in recent years. Obvious to the readers of this blog should be the work of Rupprecht on the importance of technology to competition law<\/a>. Also of interest should be some earlier work by Shapiro and Varian (their famous 1998 book Information Rules<\/a>) plus to note what people get wrong (Posner’s 2000 article on antitrust in the new economy) and what is perhaps the best competition book of the past 5 years Agrawal, Gans &\u00a0Goldfarb’s book\u00a0Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence<\/a>. I\u2019ll plug a number of the chapters in my Cambridge Handbook of Antitrust, Intellectual Property, and High Tech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Finally, there will be some interesting presentations on innovation related issues at the FTC hearings On Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century<\/a>.\u200b<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/a>
Professor D. Daniel Sokol, University of Florida<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Professor D. Daniel Sokol is the\u00a0University of Florida Research Foundation Professor and\u00a0University Term Professor at the\u00a0University of Florida Levin College of Law and Senior Of Counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems that the EU\u2013US \u201ctrade war\u201d simply does not happen since people are far too busy making money instead of answering a call to arms. As pacifists (if not money makers), we also look over the Atlantic to our friends to find out what we can learn from the oldest but one antitrust regime in the world. We are happy that Professor Daniel Sokol gives us some ideas, and it does not take us by surprise that he focuses…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240],"tags":[205,204,33],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ssnippets","tag-more-economic-approach","tag-more-technological-approach","tag-ssnippets"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"en","enabled_languages":["de","en"],"languages":{"de":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-kart.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}