The Digital Economy: a Covid Winner but for whom?

During lockdown, the digital economy has been essential and has boomed. But are private network monopolies in the public interest?
The early 1900s saw the first attempt to challenge the might of huge corporations in the US such as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. The anti-trust movement lead to the breakup of these behemoths.

But the new economic ideology in the 80s changed the politics and the anti-trust drive withered. Recently the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook etc have lead to a revived interest in the negative impacts of quasi monopolies. But who is going to take on these 21st century behemoths, especially when they are likely to paint themselves as the heros of the lockdown?

Ariel Ezrachi, a leading thinker in this area, provides an introduction to the issues followed by discussion. He joins a discussion panel with Tim Cowan, a leading competition lawyer and Miriam Brett, an author of Common Wealth’s Report – Democratic Digital Infrastructure, to exam the implications of the pandemic for reform.

Ariel Ezrachi

Ariel is the Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law at the University of Oxford and the Director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. He …

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Miriam Brett

Miriam is Director of Research and Advocacy for Common Wealth think tank, working on ownership strategies for a democratic and sustainable economy. She is also a research fellow for The …

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Tim Cowen

Chair of the Antitrust practice at Preiskel & Co LLP, Tim is independently recognised as one of the UK’s leading regulatory and competition lawyers focusing on the Technology Media and …

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