Symposium on Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario

Sam Bowman —  12 October 2020
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors marking the release of Nicolas Petit’s “Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario.” The entire series of posts is available here.]

To mark the release of Nicolas Petit’s “Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario”, Truth on the Market and  International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) are hosting some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of competition law and economics to discuss some of the book’s themes.

In his book, Petit offers a “moligopoly” framework for understanding competition between large tech companies that may have significant market shares in their ‘home’ markets but nevertheless compete intensely in adjacent ones. Petit argues that tech giants coexist as both monopolies and oligopolies in markets defined by uncertainty and dynamism, and offers policy tools for dealing with the concerns people have about these markets that avoid crude “big is bad” assumptions and do not try to solve non-economic harms with the tools of antitrust.

This symposium asks contributors to give their thoughts either on the book as a whole or on a selected chapter that relates to their own work. In it we hope to explore some of Petit’s arguments with different perspectives from our contributors.

Confirmed Participants

As in the past (see examples of previous TOTM blog symposia here), we’ve lined up an outstanding and diverse group of scholars to discuss these issues, including:

  • Kelly Fayne, Antitrust Associate, Latham & Watkins
  • Shane Greenstein, Professor of Business Administration; Co-chair of the HBS Digital Initiative, Harvard Business School
  • Peter Klein, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Chair, Department of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation, Baylor University
  • William Kovacic, Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy; Director, Competition Law Center, George Washington University Law
  • Kai-Uwe Kuhn, Academic Advisor, University of East Anglia
  • Richard Langlois, Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut
  • Doug Melamed, Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford law School
  • David Teece, Professor in Global Business, University of California’s Haas School of Business (Berkeley); Director, Center for Global Strategy; Governance and Faculty Director, Institute for Business Innovation

Thank you again to all of the excellent authors for agreeing to participate in this interesting and timely symposium.

Look for the first posts starting later today, October 12, 2020.