Awards

• "Winner of Antitrust Writing Awards 2020, Best Antitrust Academic Article Unilateral Conduct Category, for ""Are 'FANGs' Monopolies? A Theory of Competition Under Uncertainty"" (Chapter 3)."
• Winner of Antitrust Writing Awards 2020, Best Antitrust Academic Article Unilateral Conduct Category, for Are 'FANGs' Monopolies? A Theory of Competition Under Uncertainty (Chapter 3).

Overview

"This book asks a simple question: are the tech giants monopolies? In the current environment of suspicion towards the major technology companies as a result of concerns about their power and influence, it has become commonplace to talk of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or Netflix as the modern day version of the 19th century trusts. In turn, the tech giants are vilified for a whole range of monopoly harms towards consumers, workers and even the democratic process. In the US and the EU, antitrust, and regulatory reform is on the way. Using economics, business and management science as well legal reasoning, this book offers a new perspective on big tech. It builds a theory of ""moligopoly"". The theory advances that the tech giants, or at least some of them, coexist both as monopolies and oligopoly firms that compete against each other in an environment of substantial uncertainty and economic dynamism. With this, the book assesses ongoing antitrust and regulatory policy efforts. It demonstrates that it is counterproductive to pursue policies that introduce more rivalry in moligopoly markets subject to technological discontinuities. And that non-economic harms like privacy violations, fake news, or hate speech are difficult issues that belong to the realm of regulation, not antimonopoly remediation."

Full Product Details

9780198837701

Table of Contents

Reviews

The Moligopoly Scenario is an ambitious monograph that discusses the nature of competition in digital markets and explores the role of competition law and regulation. It is a provocative read that is full of ideas cutting across disciplines and legal regimes and challenging many of the tools and intuitions that are too often taken for granted. It will spark lively debates and is a valuable reminder that complex emerging phenomena require us to think hard, not to rush to ready-made answers. * Pablo Ibanez, Professor, London School of Economics * This is an unusual and extraordinary book. It combines law, economics, textual analysis, critical thinking and a fair amount of philosophy. Its thesis is bound to be polemical, but it is damn well argued; defended with passion and zeal but also with data and logic. I hope it attracts as much attention as it deserves and causes as much debate and controversy as it merits. * Jorge Padilla, Compass Lexecon, Senior Managing Director, Europe * Petit documents intense levels of broad based competition faced (and delivered) by big tech firms and he tries to reconcile this with the moniker of monopoly that some antitrust scholar and regulators ('Neostructuralists') attach to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. He finds the confusion stems less from ideology than from analytical framework used. Petit offers new and refreshing ways to think about competition in environments when there is deep uncertainty. The book is a must read for anyone interested in competition policy towards big tech. His framework challenges received wisdom and is much welcomed. * David Teece, Professor, University of California, Berkeley * With his 'moligopoly hypothesis' Nicolas Petit has set forth a fresh and insightful perspective on the tech giants that will challenge the preconceptions of the firms' populist critics, their Chicago School defenders, and competition law officials as well. * A.Douglas Melamed, Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School *

Author Information

Nicolas Petit is Professor of Competition Law at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Nicolas Petit is also invited Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. Prior to joining the EUI, Nicolas Petit was Professor at the University of Liege. Nicolas Petit has also held a public office positionas a part time judge with the Belgian competition authority, and has worked in private practice with a leading US law firm in Brussels.

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