CHALLENGES FOR COMPETITION IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY ARE DISCUSSED AT THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy pointed out that the substance of competition changes in the conditions of economic transformation and shared the experience of Russian competition authority in improving practices and adapting the antimonopoly law to the new reality

The Annual Conference on Competition Law, Economics and Policy organized by South African Competition Commission included a session on reviewing the competition law approaches to enforcement in the digital epoch.  Its participants included Andrey Tsarikovskiy, as well as Law Professor from University College London, Ioannis Lianos; Professor of Economics, Toulouse School of Economics, Marc Ivaldi; Tshilidzi Marwala, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of Johannesburg University.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy shared FAS experience of the “Big Digital Cat” Project – software designed to expose and suppress anticompetitive agreements using big data analysis. He detailed the procedures for collecting data from opened and limited-access sources, their analysis and exchange with the relevant bodies, which plays the crucial role in proving cartels.

Deputy Head of FAS emphasize the need to adopt national laws to the digital environment and described the “fifth antimonopoly package” passed in the Russian Federation and introducing such terms as “algorithms” and “network effects” in the conceptual framework.

Finally Andrey Tsarikovskiy highlighted the specifics of market and analysis and merger approval in the digital economy, pointing out that the procedure for defining market boundaries are changing in the digital epoch, because now a considerable share is taken by large transnational corporations. Prospective analysis of merger consequences plays a special role as well as international cooperation on approving a particular merger.