At yesterday’s Big Data & Competition Law conference, our Managing Economist Dr Norbert Maier participated in a panel discussion on Big Data & Merger Control: Killer Acquisitions, as well as presented the topic on Merger Control: Market definition in the Data Driven Markets.

Regarding ‘killer acquisitions’ the challenge remains how to identify them. Changing notification conditions means more work for competition authorities. The relevant toolbox needs to be further developed: the understanding of data & network effects should be improved. Counterfactuals should be identified with care. Analysis of best practices should be shared.

On Market Definition, Norbert Maier spoke about the role of data. Substitution between ‘big data’ sets is key and should be based on the insights that they offer. Returns to scale & scope should be clarified in each case in order to understand the relevance of some novel theories of harm. Empirical analysis of ‘big data’ should be complemented with a wider survey across market players to better understand the use of certain types of data, how they strengthen network effects and how they do/do not cause competitive harm.

Learn more about the conference

For further infromation, please contact Managing Economist Dr Norbert Maier