Baxt Lecture 2020

The 11th annual Baxt Lecture was held this evening. The event is run by the Competition Law and Economics Network at the Melbourne Law School and was hosted by its director, Dr Wendy Ng.

Professor Michal Gal delivered the address virtually: 'Radical restorative remedies for digital markets'. The address was topical and thought provoking. The Commentator, ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court, followed the address with some challenging enforcement questions and a useful discussion ensued.

Update: a recording of the event is now available here.

The address drew on the forthcoming paper, Michal Gal & Nicolas Petit, ‘Radical Restorative Remedies for Digital Markets’ (2021) 37(1) Berkeley Technology Law Journal. A copy of the paper can be downloaded from SSRN.

Abstract
Much evidence from recent antitrust cases casts doubt on the ability of conventional remedies to restore competition in digital markets. In her presentation, Professor Gal considers three untested remedies for antitrust enforcement in digital markets: mandatory sharing of algorithmic learning, subsidization of competitors, and temporary shutdowns. Whilst these remedies are radical as they go beyond halting specific anticompetitive conduct by actively seeking to restore structural conditions favouring competition and entail government interference with freedom of enterprise and property rights to a substantially higher degree than the market-driven process which normally governs antitrust remedy design, these remedies fall short of outright economic regulation in that they aim to restore the competitive process and not to impose a competitive outcome. All three remedies create complex trade-offs and require careful balancing before implementation.