ABOUT US

The goal of the Centre for Competition Economics is to foster greater interaction between academic and professional economists active in the field of competition policy. The Centre will provide a forum that facilitates a two-way exchange of economics ideas on important topics in competition policy. Academic economists will provide insights from latest research while professional economists will provide insights from their deep analysis of the functioning of particular markets. Such an exchange of ideas will help provide insightful inputs into important policy decisions towards the implementation of competition policy.

To foster such two-way exchange, the Centre will have regular (online) seminars open to a wide audience. The panel will always include both academic and professional economists (e.g., from economic consultancies and/or competition authorities) who will contribute with their expertise on the particular topic of interest. The aim is to distil policy implications that provide insights on the competitive effects of different business practices. These insights can be used in academia and in policy work and help to obtain measurable results under which conditions a particular practice is pro- or anticompetitive.

In addition, each year, the Centre will award a prize of €10k for a very good research paper on competition economics from a Ph.D. student, where the focus will be on originality and rigour of research as well as the contribution to deepen our understanding on matters for competition policy.

The Centre is funded by RBB but is entirely independent. Its Board consists of 7 members, one Director (Markus Reisinger), 3 Fellows (Claire Chambolle, Diane Coyle, and Otto Toivanen), and 3 members from RBB (Simon Bishop, Benoît Durand, and Adrian Majumdar).

TOPICS

Mergers
Collusion
Vertical Restraints
Innovation
Industrial Policy
State Aid
PHD Award

Interest in industrial policy goes in cycles and is again at a high level. There is an ongoing discussion within the EU, for example, of whether the EU should support and foster “EU champions” to close the technological gap with the US. Another important driving force is the understandable need to combat climate and environmental change. These challenges call for centralized policies and raise questions such as whether the risk of so-called carbon leakage is real, and how that would affect the competitiveness of those nations implementing stricter environmental policies. At least the following are questions of topical importance and interest:

  • Should national champions be supported and if so, how to choose them?
  • How to create / maintain a level playing field while combating climate and environmental change?
  • What levels of industrial policy should be local, what supranational?
  • How to combine industrial policies with other policies such as employment and regional policies?
  • What is the interplay between regulation and competition?