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This book illustrates the challenges that regulators and policy makers have faced in the transition from the ‘old’ network industries to the new digital ecosystem. It succinctly describes the evolution of digital economy, its main actors, notably global digital platforms, as well as its interactions, interdependences, and trade-offs. Eventually, it proposes insights about why public rules are needed, what kind of rules could be more effective, fair, and efficient, and who should pose and enforce them. The book is opened by an introduction, dealing with Digital Transformation, Big Techs, and Public Policies, which provides a general conceptual and thematic framework to the following analysis but could be also read as a stand-alone paper. The following chapters are grouped in two parts: I. The Evolution of Digital Markets and Digital Rights, and II. Regulating Big Tech’s Impact on Market and Society. The secondary title - the European approach – has a twofold meaning. It highlights the fact that this work has a clear focus on EU law and policy - although the economic and institutional issues addressed are global phenomena, common to all world’s economies. In addition, it also underlines that European digital policy is not yet complete and effective. This book intends to provide a small contribution to the ongoing policy making process, as well as to the wider academic and policy debate.
Across the world, regulators and policy makers are grappling with how to establish a competitive, safe and fair online environment that also safeguards users’ fundamental rights as citizens. Ahead of the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), this book “Digital markets and online platforms: new perspectives on regulation and competition law“, presents CERRE’s latest contribution to the debate with concrete policy recommendations. Together, the policy recommendations in this book present a roadmap that should be pursued for EU policy makers to safeguard competition and innovation in digital platform markets. They can be organised into three key areas for action: (i) More effective enforcement, (ii) increased transparency and switching easiness, and (iii) providing access to key innovation capabilities. “The need to safeguard fair and vibrant competition, which is also seen as an important driving factor for innovation, is nothing new for policy makers. However, the characteristics and complexities of digital markets have challenged some of the traditional approaches.” – Jan Krämer, editor of the book and CERRE Academic Co-Director The book’s recommendations highlight that platform transparency and associated data collection by authorities, as well as data sharing by platforms (initiated through consumers or authorities), are the two most important overarching policy measures for platform markets in the near future. They facilitate enforcement, consumer choice, and innovation capabilities in the digital economy. The contents of this book were presented and debated during a CERRE live debate with guest speakers Anne Yvrande-Billon (Arcep’s Director of Economic, Market and Digital Affairs), MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Vice-President of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs) and Javier Espinoza (Financial Times’ EU Correspondent covering competition and digital policy).
Across the world, regulators and policy makers are grappling with how to establish a competitive, safe and fair online environment that also safeguards users' fundamental rights as citizens. Ahead of the European Commission's Digital Markets Act (DMA), this book “Digital markets and online platforms: new perspectives on regulation and competition law“, presents CERRE's latest contribution to the debate with concrete policy recommendations. Together, the policy recommendations in this book present a roadmap that should be pursued for EU policy makers to safeguard competition and innovation in digital platform markets. They can be organised into three key areas for action: (i) More effective enforcement, (ii) increased transparency and switching easiness, and (iii) providing access to key innovation capabilities.
Global finance is in the middle of a radical transformation fueled by innovative financial technologies. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of retail financial services in Europe. Institutional interest and digital asset markets are also growing blurring the boundaries between the token economy and traditional finance. Blockchain, AI, quantum computing and decentralised finance (DeFI) are setting the stage for a global battle of business models and philosophies. The post-Brexit EU cannot afford to ignore the promise of digital finance. But the Union is struggling to keep pace with global innovation hubs, particularly when it comes to experimenting with new digital forms of capital raising. Calibrating the EU digital finance strategy is a balancing act that requires a deep understanding of the factors driving the transformation, be they legal, cultural, political or economic, as well as their many implications. The same FinTech inventions that use AI, machine learning and big data to facilitate access to credit may also establish invisible barriers that further social, racial and religious exclusion. The way digital finance actors source, use, and record information presents countless consumer protection concerns. The EU’s strategic response has been years in the making and, finally, in September 2020 the Commission released a Digital Finance Package. This special issue collects contributions from leading scholars who scrutinize the challenges digital finance presents for the EU internal market and financial market regulation from multiple public policy perspectives. Author contributions adopt a critical yet constructive and solutions-oriented approach. They aim to provide policy-relevant research and ideas shedding light on the complexities of the digital finance promise. They also offer solid proposals for reform of EU financial services law.
This book critically assesses how the rise of the collaborative economy in the European Union Digital Single Market is disrupting consolidated legal acquisitions, such as classical internal market categories, as well as the applicability of consumer protection, data protection, and labour and competition law. It argues that the collaborative economy will, sooner or later, require some sort of regulatory intervention from the European Union. This regulatory intervention, far from stifling innovation, will benefit online platforms, service providers and users by providing them with a clearer and more predictable environment in which to conduct their business. Although primarily intended for academics, this book also appeals to a wider readership, including, but not limited to, national and international regulators, private firms and lobbies as well as online platforms, consumer associations and trade unions.
Business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce transactions, including social commerce, are rapidly expanding, although e-commerce is still small when compared to traditional business transactions. As the familiarity of making purchases using smart devices continues to expand, many global and regional investors hope to target the ASEAN region to tap into the rising digital market in this region. The Handbook of Research on Innovation and Development of E-Commerce and E-Business in ASEAN is an essential reference source that discusses economics, marketing strategies, and mobile payment systems, as well as digital marketplaces, communication technologies, and social technologies utilized for business purposes. Featuring research on topics such as business culture, mobile technology, and consumer satisfaction, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, financial managers, business professionals, academicians, students, and researchers.
This open access book offers a comparative and inter-disciplinary perspective on the unique competition law challenges presented by the converged digital markets. Following the digitalisation of even the most traditional bricks-and-mortar sectors of the economy, a well-functioning internal market can only be guaranteed by ensuring the competitiveness of the digital markets. What role do intellectual property law and competition law play in this digital world? How can a more economic analysis strengthen innovation policies to achieve a truly competitive digital single market? The book provides a rigorous discussion of the many reasons why the regulatory responses, not just in Europe but in other jurisdictions too, may fall short. It addresses an array of procedural, substantive and other issues that are generating intense debate across the antitrust community. This includes the scope and objectives of digital regulation, whether the application of ex-ante rules would result in fragmentation and inconsistencies, and whether such regulatory regimes are an appropriate tool for substantive assessment. The book explores whether the application of these rules would effectively tackle the competition enforcement challenges seen under the competition laws, whether they can be applied without undermining other rights such as privacy, and whether they are appropriate for this digital age as well as the new digital era ahead of us. Part 1 offers a detailed inter-disciplinary perspective on the most recent legislative solutions in the European Union, namely, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the Data Act. Part 2 offers competition and regulatory responses to these ever-emerging digital challenges by the UK, Latin American, Indian and Chinese regulators. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.
As the European Commission is preparing its Data Act, this new CERRE report provides concrete recommendations for effective data sharing governance, more specifically when a party has significant incentives not to share data. The forthcoming data act should provide better incentives to stimulate two forms of data sharing: individual users’ data sharing and bulk data sharing between firms. Data sharing is seen by many as an effective means to safeguard competition in digital markets, allowing smaller players to get access to precious data. The authors of the CERRE report, Richard Feasey and Alexandre de Streel, have analysed current EU rules imposing data sharing and conclude these do not provide the comprehensive governance framework needed for data sharing to effectively take place. “Given the incentives a gatekeeper platform may have not to share data, and the potential for this platform to leverage into other markets, we recommend imposing an obligation to share data”, explain Richard Feasey. “The most important and difficult task for regulators lies in determining the type and scope of data that is to be shared and which organisations should be obliged to share it. We conclude that better incentives and governance are needed to stimulate two forms of data sharing in the EU: data about individuals and bulk data between firms.” Regulating recipients as well as donors Regulation for data sharing should not be viewed as being limited to the oversight of a small number of large platforms that might be obliged to share data. It also requires strict oversight of potentially a very large number of smaller firms that might seek access to such data. Regulators will need to establish an effective and comprehensive system of regulation of both donors and recipients of data to guard against misuse and to ensure trust on all sides. Sharing individual users data Over time, the sharing or porting of data about individual users’ data could accumulate and be used for other purposes. For this reason, the authors recommend that obligations to share data about individual users should be quite extensive and apply to digital platforms which may be described as meeting the ‘gatekeeper minus’ threshold. The report encourages regulators to require the sharing of individual user data without any payment. If high transaction costs and uncertain users’ benefits prevent the effectiveness of this approach, policymakers should consider more radical approaches, such as allowing the use of an ‘opt-out’ option (rather than, the current ‘opt-in’) for the sharing of personal data in order to ensure fair competition in digital markets. The European Commission should consider provisions in the forthcoming Data Act to enable the use of ‘opt-out’ arrangements for the sharing of personal data to preserve market contestability under certain prescribed conditions. Although this may represent some loss of consumer sovereignty over their data, such a trade-off may need to be made if data sharing arrangements are to achieve their aim of ensuring contestability in digital markets. Bulk sharing of user data The competitive impact of the bulk transfer of aggregate user data could be significant since the volume of data to be shared is likely to be very substantial and may represent a significant proportion of the donor platform’s data assets. Since obtaining individual consent from every user would not be feasible in these circumstances, regulators and policymakers should consider other mechanisms to enable the bulk sharing of non-anonymised user data. Alternatively, regulators should consider requiring the platform that controls the data to allow third party access to the full data set so that third parties may train algorithms or otherwise derive the same sorts of insights from the data that are available to the incumbent. Recipients of aggregated data should be required to pay for the data, with the payment varying according to the volume and value of the data being shared (and not simply the costs of implementing the data sharing arrangements or storing the data). The primary concern here is to preserve incentives for both parties in the sharing arrangement to innovate and invest in existing or new digital services to acquire additional data for themselves. The Commission should undertake a study to consider how regulators would establish wholesale prices for data that was to be shared. The challenge ahead European policymakers should consider legislative changes with the Data Act to enable the sharing of personal data on an ‘opt-out’ basis under certain narrowly prescribed circumstances and to ensure contestability in digital markets. Finally, data sharing remedies that the report considers arise from the assumption that digital platforms will continue to derive significant market power from their centralised control of big data sets. Regulators and policymakers should also keep an eye on new technologies which might enable a much greater degree of decentralisation and wider distribution of data, thereby removing the very sources of market power which this report has sought to address. This report follows another CERRE research analysing the processes that turn data into economic value for online search, e-commerce and media platforms.
The recent approval of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been a milestone in the regulation of large internet platforms operating in the new digital ecosystems. Faced with the supposed ineffectiveness and slowness of the tools traditionally used to limit the power and harmful practices for the market and consumers, mainly the prohibition of abuse of dominant position in Article 102 TFEU, the European Commission has created a new tool that acts ex ante and does not require proof of restrictive effects. It is a list of obligations and prohibitions to be imposed on the so-called “gatekeepers” providing “core platform services”. Despite the debate that has accompanied the whole process of drafting the DMA, and the care that has been taken in its design, there are many weaknesses in the final text. Both in the substantive design of the new categories, and especially in the procedural issues necessary for their implementation, the new regulation faces certain downsides that would be advisable to avoid. This paper examines these issues, with particular emphasis on the flawed interrelationship between the DMA and EU competition law.
Studies in Employment and Social Policy Volume 56 Digitalization, far from being solely a technological issue, has broad implications in the social, labour, and economic spheres. It leads to dangers as well as to new chances for the workforce, and thus labour law must develop effective ways to both protect workers and allow them to profit from new technological developments. The most thorough book of its kind, this collection of expert essays provides an abundance of well-thought-out material for understanding the consequences of digitalization for the labour market and industrial relations. Recognizing that only an international perspective can make it possible to face the challenges of the present (and the future), renowned authorities from the International Labour Organization and the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law, as well as outstanding labour law professors, examine in depth such salient issues as the following: transformation of production systems; the spread of artificial intelligence; precariousness and exploitation in the gig economy; lessons learned from COVID-19; employment status of platform workers; new cross-border issues; rights to trade union association and collective bargaining; role of the State in the new digital labour market; and blurred lines between work and private life. Thanks to the international team of contributors, the issues are dealt with from a variety of overlapping perspectives and points of view, combining aspects of labour law, commercial law, corporate governance, and international law. Highlighting the need to adapt, especially through the right to training, work, and professionalism with respect to the new technological landscape, the book draws on legislative, judicial, and theoretical initiatives suggesting ways of responding positively to the requests for protection that arise in the new forms of production. A uniquely valuable tool for study and reflection for policymakers and academics, the book is also sure to be valued by entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, corporate lawyers, judges, human rights experts, and trade unionists who are interested in the issues of labour, industrial relations, and social rights in European and international contexts.