Digital Platforms: Towards a Comprehensive Policy Framework - 2022

Programme Description

Digital platforms have become a focal point in policy conversations across the world, also due to their ambiguous impact on the economy and society. On the one hand, digital platforms have been the source of increased consumer savings, job creation, and economic growth; on the other hand, they raise novel concerns which current regulatory approaches and instruments do not appear well-equipped to address. These concerns relate to possible harms such as monopoly rent extraction, adverse impacts on labor conditions and smaller businesses, content filtering and disinformation.

The result has been the development of a complex policy discussion, not so much about “whether” to regulate digital platforms, but rather on the difficulty of reaching consensus on “what”, “how” and “who” to regulate. This executive training course will offer a deep dive into the legal and regulatory approaches that have been attempted over the past three decades, from antitrust rules on dominance and mergers to Platform-To-Business (P2B) relationships. The recently proposed EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, the recent Chinese guidelines on anticompetitive practices by internet platforms, and similar regulatory actions adopted in Korea and Canada feature different approaches to similar problems. The newly launched EU-U.S. Tech and Trade Council will try to smoothen, to the extent possible, transatlantic differences in this domain.

The attendees of this course will be able to understand better how platforms operate, how they create value and how can they potentially act anti-competitively or extract value in their relationship with other businesses and end users. The participants will also have the opportunity to learn about the evolving economic and technological features of digital platforms and their prospective benefits and risks for the economy and society, especially in the context of a growing use of sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques which often escape the ability of regulators to monitor the market.

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Programme Structure

1. Digital Platforms: A Deep Dive in the Economic and Technical Features of Online Giants
2. Competition in the Age of Digital Platforms
3. From Competition Policy to Regulation
4. From Knowledge to Action

 

Learning Outcomes

After the end of this training participants will better understand:

• How to distinguish pro- from anti-competitive conduct
• The economics of multi-sided platforms and its relevance to policy
• The intricacies of algorithmic practices in modern digital platforms
• The trade-offs in designing policies for digital platforms
• The evolving business models, the revenue mix and the commercial practices of digital platforms
• The impact of digital platforms on innovation and industrial policy
• How AI regulation in several countries may affect digital platforms
• The opportunities and challenges of digital platforms for democracy and the protection of fundamental rights
• The intersection between competition, regulation, data strategies, and AI policies in different jurisdictions
• The interplay between domestic and transnational governance aspects of cyberspace
• How to present and discuss topics related to digital platforms and Artificial Intelligence