Economic Analysis Seminar I

Recently, the European Union has adopted a number of new laws to regulate the digital economy; it has become the first region of the world with a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital technologies and those EU regulations may be followed by other countries under the so-called Brussels effects.

-       Some laws regulate the conducts of Big Tech platforms (such as Google, Apple, Meta or Amazon) in order to increase contestability and fairness on digital markets as well as to reduce illegal content and products on the Internet;

-       Other laws will stimulate the sharing of data across firms in order to stimulate data-based innovation;

-       Some laws also control the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) high risk services.

All those new laws have been proposed by the European Commission after a careful economic analysis of market failures in the digital economy as well as an analysis of the possible effects of those new rules.

The main objective of this seminar is to analyse the economic rationale of those new rules and policies and, more generally, explain how the economic analysis is used by the European Commission to improve EU policy design.