The Efficiency of Competition Soft Law in the Digital Era – A Law and Economics Perspective

Description

Most legal regimes have a hybrid model of competition law that combines both hard law and soft law. Although in EU competition law there are more soft law than hard law instruments, the existing literature has rarely addressed the question of why competition soft law is so often used by the European Commission. Furthermore, limited empirical research has focused on the efficiency of employing soft law to address competition concerns in digital markets.

The law and economics literature has suggested that using competition soft law rather than hard law has some theoretical advantages, more specifically in terms of lower costs, flexibility and better information. Hence, soft law may help to address particular disadvantages of hard law, i.e. hard law is often considered to be inflexible and costly (in terms of time and money) to formulate. In order to evaluate the validity of these economic predictions in relation to the governance of digital markets, this paper draws upon the experience of the European Union as a case in point. It first examines the costs inherent to hard law, followed by a more intricate exploration of the (theoretical) advantages and disadvantages of soft law, as derived from the extant body of literature. Subsequently we test the predictions posited by this literature, within the domain of EU competition law, focusing on digital markets. This analytical undertaking enables us to assess the potential of competition soft law to foster (dynamic) efficiency in the governance of digital markets.

Period	29 Jun 2023
Event title	ASCOLA 2023: 18th ASCOLA conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Athens, GreeceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International