One of the main objectives of the so-called Damages Directive (2014/104/EU) was to make antitrust enforcement more effective. Although in most EU countries private antitrust enforcement has been possible subject to general rules of civil law; the number of private antitrust litigations has...

One of the most intractable competition issues for the European Commission (the “Commission”) over the last ten years has been to define the circumstances in which the licensing conduct or litigation strategy of a standard-essential patent (often referred to as “SEP”) holders amount to...

This paper shows that the technology giants that antitrust agencies tend to characterize as entrenched monopolists can also be seen as firms engaged in a process of vibrant oligopolistic competition. Those firms - we refer to them as "moligopolists" - compete against the non-consumption in...

Leniency programs as a tool for cartel detection and cartel destabilization, have been implemented since the early nineties. Theoretical work has shown that leniency programs can be eff ective in enhancing cartel detection and deterrence, but these e ffects are not straight-forward. It is even...

This paper will examine three recent instances involving competition concerns on the Internet. The Internet at its inception was widely viewed as not suffering from any competition concerns, however in the last ten years, with on the one hand the emergence of major Internet corporations, and on...

Leniency programs as a tool for cartel detection and cartel destabilization, have been implemented since the early nineties. Theoretical work has shown that leniency programs can be effective in enhancing cartel detection and deterrence, but these effects are not straight-forward. It is even...

This paper looks at whether the standard unilateral effects model can be applied to non-price competition parameters such as innovation. This question arises because competition authorities are intervening in horizontal mergers that are found to give rise to a “significant impediment to...

The optimization of fines to deter and detect cartel behavior is one of the main goals of competition policy. Although it is generally argued that fines should be high to be deterrent, the debate on what constitutes an optimal fine is unsettled and some authors suggest using profits (rather than...

Mainstream competition law has failed to protect competition in core digital platform markets. This is partially due to enforcement agency’s current commitment to proving the investigated conduct’s actual effects on competition and consumer welfare on the basis of in-depth assessments of...

Regulatory reform efforts in a broad range of industries have resulted in increased importance of competitive forces as a means to allocate resources and improve economic efficiency. A number of indicators suggest that such forces have been stronger in the United States than in most other OECD...