On 16 June 2023, Vicky Robertson was called upon as an expert by the 140th Meeting of the OECD Competition Committee, for its roundtable on theories of harm for digital mergers. With her on the panel were Annabelle Gawer (University of Surrey) and Luís Cabral (NYU). Frédéric Jenny chaired the session.
Amid insightful country contributions on various important aspects of merger enforcement in these dynamic markets, Vicky showed trends in the application of traditional theories of harm to digital merger cases.
During the session, there was largely agreement that digital markets are a different animal – as we’re figuring out which one, it’s important to keep sight of dynamic market realities as a moving target. Traditional theories of harm can only go so far – we need to consider ecosystem theories of harm.
You can find the OECD’s background note authored by Carolina Abate and Zoe Lyon here: https://www.oecd.org/daf/competition/theories-of-harm-for-digital-mergers-2023.pdf
Vicky’s remarks were based on her OECD paper: https://one.oecd.org/document/DAF/COMP/WD(2023)59/en/pdf