Prof. Ariel Ezrachi, Oxford: Goals of Competition Law | Post-Sponge | DMA | Antitrust | Latest Books

Prof. Ariel Ezrachi, Professor of Competition Law and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. Co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (OUP).
We are truly delighted to record a conversation with one of the most insightful minds in the area of EU competition law – a rare expert combining encyclopaedic juristic knowledge of positive law with deep and eloquent reflections on the philosophical nature of this one of the most intellectually challenging and fertile fields of legal knowledge – Professor Ariel Ezrachi from the University of Oxford. We started with looking at his seminal article “Sponge” – the paper, which – together with Lianos’s ‘Polycentric Competition Law’ – epitomises a new thinking about this field. It has been published in 2017, during the period of an absolute intellectual dominance of Law & Economics with its paradoxical combination of reductionist, mechanistic, formulaic perception of the phenomena of markets and competition and excessively (often intentionally) complex apparatus. “Sponge” has broken the hermetic bubble of the field, and we have looked at how Competition Law – and Ezrachi’s thinking – evolved ever since. Of course, Prof. Ezrachi presented three of his very impactful (and in some sense controversial) books co-authored with Prof. Maurice Stucke; reflected on the DMA and on a number of other topical matters. We have covered among others the following:

✅ Sponge and post-Sponge
✅ the universality of competition policy
✅ how important is the legal in competition law?
✅ how ‘objective’ / ‘neutral’ the economic knowledge is?
✅ did we go to far with refuting Law & Economics?
✅ towards the ‘relative’ (non-absolute) relativism
✅ can competition policy have endless objectives?
✅ why are some agencies more technocratic than the other?
✅ public competition policy as a gap-filler
✅ the taxonomy of factors influencing competition policy
✅ competition and ideology
✅ the DMA: how and why it is different
✅ “Virtual Competition” book
✅ “Competition Overdose” book
✅ “How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation” book
✅ response to critics
✅ recommendations to peers-academics and students

In the previous episode (#87, published last Tuesday) we discussed with Antoine Babinet from the Commission's DMA Enforcement Team the latest development of the Digital Markets Act enforcement.
In the next 89th episode (to be published next Tuesday) we’ll have the second meeting of our PhD Café where Dr Magali Eben and I invite two PhD researchers to present their scholarship in competition law.
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NB. many other DMA-related discussions are present on a regular basis within our "Shaping Competition in the Digital Age" research project blog – https://scidaproject.com/
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The Digital Markets Research Hub is an independent academic initiative aiming at scrutinising the functioning of competition/regulation in digital markets. We host one-to-one interviews with leading policymakers, regulators and practitioners. We also organise online mini-workshops inviting high-profile experts and academics in various fields of digital competition law & policy to discuss the most vibrant issues of the ongoing regulatory reforms in digital markets. While having our clear normative stand on the matters discussed within the hub, we value different views and invite relevant stakeholders and thinkers representing the whole spectrum of reasonable positions on how to regulate competition in digital markets. All our materials are available at YouTube channel, which you are very welcome to subscribe to. This interview is organised & conducted by Prof. Oles Andriychuk, School of Law, University of Exeter.