Starting #46Clasf workshop at @UniRomaTre on Digital Markets, AI & the future of competition law, @barryjrodger, @MargheritaCola3 & Barbara Annicchiarico, good to see again @AngusMacCulloch @pacomarcos

On Sept. 24, @GiuColangelo joins the LEAR Competition Festival to discuss how the DMA’s single-rulebook promise is working in practice. Its implementation now overlaps with sector-specific laws and national proceedings, raising questions about legal certainty and investment. ⬇️

The EU General Court upheld the ban on Booking.com’s Etraveli deal, accepting that adding flight services could reinforce Booking’s hotel position. ICYMI: @GiuColangelo argues merger control must separate anticompetitive exclusion from integration that consumers value. 🔗⬇️

The Berlin Senate froze rents for roughly 1.5 million apartments in February 2020, capping them at 2019 levels and threatening landlords with fines up to 500,000 euros for charging more. Politicians sold this as relief for working Berliners getting priced out of their neighborhoods. What actually happened: developers stopped building. Why pour capital into a city where bureaucrats set your return? New listings on the market dropped by nearly half while listings in Brandenburg, just outside Berlin's jurisdiction, surged. Landlords quietly shifted units to the unregulated short-term market. Supply tightened further. The Federal Constitutional Court killed the law in April 2021, ruling Berlin lacked jurisdiction over rental law. Rents jumped immediately as landlords collected back-payments they had legally reserved the right to claim all along. Tenants who thought they were protected suddenly faced bills they could not afford. The Berlin Senate manufactured a crisis inside the crisis it was supposedly fixing. Price controls reduce housing supply, not housing costs. Every euro of rent a landlord cannot legally charge is an investment signal that dies before a single foundation gets poured. You end up with fewer apartments, not cheaper ones, and eventually the law collapses anyway and you absorb the full price shock at once. These people never learn.

EU competition law faces a timing problem in AI markets. Act too late, and dominant positions may harden. Act too early, and enforcement may suppress the competition it seeks to protect. Join ICLE and ULiège in Brussels on Nov. 2 to debate how the rules should respond. ⬇️

Do we need an AI cartel to save the world? I discuss Anthropic's proposal for a coordinated slowdown with @LawEconCenter's @AuerDirk on the latest episode of The Center Edge. Full episode in the replies👇

Judge Brinkema's detailed remedy opinion is unsealed Calls structural relief in this case "neither realistic nor needed," "neither feasible nor an appropriate remedy," "messy and highly risky," not tailored to fit wrong & more

The Booking.com–Etraveli ruling gives EU antitrust enforcers support for blocking mergers when complementary services may entrench a dominant position. @GiuColangelo explains why merger control should distinguish anticompetitive moats from better integrated products. 🔗⬇️

Under the DSA, ChatGPT is now an online search engine. Under the DMA, Brussels is waiting to see whether AI warrants a new category. @GiuColangelo examines what happens when one AI service faces two rulebooks. ⬇️

Digital platforms face regulatory measures and antitrust probes over self-preferencing. Yet the term covers practices already addressed by competition law, and evidence does not show they necessarily harm consumers. In World Competition, @GiuColangelo & @geoffmanne explain. 🔗⬇️

A platform can carry zero news and still owe money under Australia’s News Bargaining Incentive to support journalism. @GiuColangelo on the free-riding case behind mandatory platform payments. 🔗⬇️

If antitrust protects competition -not individual trading partners- when should economic dependence trigger intervention, and how does it differ from abuse of dominance? @GiuColangelo draws on transaction cost economics: it's about hold-up, not fairness. networklawreview.org/superio…

95% of Amazon shoppers consider only the prominent "Buybox" offer—and Amazon's own offers are featured as often as similar offers priced 5% cheaper. Yet, as consumers prefer these offers, this article finds that the skew roughly maximizes consumer surplus. econometricsociety.org/publi…