2018-19

Course summary: Modern Competition Law emerged in the United States in 1890 as a form of dealing with one of the disruptive economic movements of the time: thconcentration of economic power stemming from technological change (industrialization and mass production leading to economies of scale that favoured big enterprises) and made viable through legal innovations that allowed new business structures (trusts and then holding companies, allowing control of several legally-independent corporations). As Competition Law enters its second century, the legal and economic analytical paradigms that were shaped to a predominantly industrial and service-oriented economy are facing new challenges in adjusting to the new business environment of a digital economy. This course provides an introduction to some of those challenges, providing students with insights on some of the most recent academic research and the ongoing battle between two paradigms: the dominant efficiency-oriented paradigm (that views the growing concentration of market power in the hands of technological giants as inevitable and indeed desirable) and the so-called Brandesian movement (or, scornfully, “Hipster Antitrust”), that would reinvent Competition Law by reclaiming its early spirit against excessive concentration of economic power.