Your Weekly Digest | Issue 216

25 January 2021 . 3 min read

Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook - The New York Times

Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents.

Foreign-Language Training Companies Admit to Participating in Conspiracy to Defraud the United States | OPA | Department of Justice

Two providers of foreign-language services, Comprehensive Language Center Inc. (CLCI), based in the Washington, D.C., area, and Berlitz Languages Inc. (Berlitz), based in New Jersey, were charged with participating in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating competitive bidding for a multi-million dollar foreign-language training contract issued by the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2017, the Department of Justice announced today. Read more.

FTC Publishes Annual Performance Report | FTC

The Federal Trade Commission published its Fiscal Year 2020 Performance Report as required under the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010. Read more.

How can algorithms reduce competition? | CMA

Many of us use a search engine to look up products we want to buy. Often, we will look for a comparison website that lets us compare products and prices from online retailers. When presented with so many search results, we tend to click the links on the first few results pages. Read more.

Merricks judgement marks a turning point for UK opt-out collective actions | Competition Policy blog | CESifo Working Paper Series

In December 2020 the UK Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in Merricks v MasterCard.[1] This is the first decision of the UK’s highest court on the relatively… Read more.

New Antitrust Whistleblower Reward Scheme: Are ‘Paltry’ Rewards & Anonymity Enough? | African Antitrust & Competition Law

As of January 1st, 2021, Kenya’s competition-law enforcer, the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK), started benefitting from its new “Informant Reward Scheme” (IRS). The IRS... Read more.

A paradoxical convergence: French economists and the policy towards cartels from the 1870s to the eve of the Great Depression | Working Paper

David Spector
Just like in other industrial countries, cartelization was widespread in France after the 1870 decade. Cartels, and... Read more.

The Use of Interim Measures and Commitments in the European Commission’s Broadcom Case | Journal of European Competition Law & Practice

Massimiliano Kadar
On 16 October 2019, the European Commission (‘Commission’) adopted its first decision under Article 8 of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003 (‘Regulation 1/2003’), imposing interim measures on Broadcom Inc. (‘Broadcom’). Read more.

Growing by the Masses - Revisiting the Link between Firm Size and Market Power | CESifo Working Paper Series

Hassan Afrouzi, Andres Drenik and Ryan Kim
How are a firm’s size and market power related to one another? Combining micro-data about producers and consumers... Read more.

Complementary bidding and the collusive arrangement: Evidence from an antitrust investigation | Working Paper

Robert Clark, Decio Coviello and Adriano De Leverano
A number of recent papers have proposed that a pattern of isolated winning bids may be associated with collusion. Read more.

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Valur Thrainsson

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