Are you a master student at the Toulouse School of Economics? Are you passionate about competition economics? Then get ready, mark November 25th in your calendar and join the E.CA Economics experts at the TSE career fair.

During the TSE career fair, you will:
9.30 Meet our E.CA team on site and have a chat
14.45 Learn about E.CA‘s vision for research-based consulting and why we focus on fostering team spirit and empathetic project management

One day ahead, November 24th, E.CA’s senior economist Vedika Hegde and economist Raphaël Poncet will also lead a workshop on ex-post evaluation of a number of vertical mergers in the UK to the Economics and Competition Law students at the TSE.

E.CA’s experts will contribute to the annual high-profile case panels at the Association of Competition Economics (ACE) conference on 17-18 November in Lisbon. The organisers have put together great program and sessions ahead, where you can find our director Alexis Walckiers as a moderator on “Dutch investigation into retail and wholesale markets for fixed telecommunication services.” And our associate principal Alia Schweiger as a discussant along with Marcel Balz and Heiko Karle on how to define local markets for grocery retail stores based on the controversial sale of the REAL stores in Germany to Kaufland and Edeka.

Check the programme here: https://bit.ly/3hLCTLl
Find out more about the conference: https://bit.ly/3T9NoF0

If you are studying Economics and you are looking for a career where you could apply your theoretical and empirical skills to the real world problems, come and join us at the Barcelona School of Economics Career Day 2022 on October 21st.

Programme:
9.20 Learn about E.CA‘s vision for research based consulting and why we focus on fostering team spirit
10.45 Broaden your network with experts in the field with our senior economists Ignacio Balaguer López and Niklas Gebhard.
15.15 Join our case study on Heineken and a pub chain in the UK

Place: Ciutadella Campus in Barcelona

Office Opening and Expert Debate “Polarisation of Antitrust” on 11 October 2022

E.CA Economics is expanding its European footprint and has opened new premises in Clerkenwell, London. To mark the occasion, we hosted an interactive expert debate. The event brought together prominent academics, policymakers, lawyers and economists from around the globe to discuss differing perspectives on competition enforcement.

During the first panel discussion, Amelia Fletcher and Lars-Hendrik Röller explored with Bas Dessens the relationship between competition policy and sustainability, discussing the role of firms, investors and the government in a push for competitive markets overall that have the potential to provide sustainable choices for consumers in the long-run. This view was also carefully complemented with cautious take on the extent to which certain types of green investments work, along with discussions on the optimal level of tax revenues used in funding such initiatives.

Further, on the second panel discussion that was moderated by Alena Kozakova, our speakers Joseph Farrell and Mike Walker focused on the debate between over-enforcement and under-enforcement in antitrust policy. While on the one hand, the role of decision theory and the increased need for simpler economic analysis is observed, on the other hand, some ideas that could explain under-enforcement were discussed.  In particular, the role of mistreatment of uncertainty, failure to appreciate that competition drives innovation and finally, a careful review of the firm’s incentives could explain why there is under-enforcement in the economy.

Watch the panels on “Polarisation of Antitrust” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cbQt8EARKM

Our directors Hans W. Friederiszick and Lars-Hendrik Röller are looking forward to participating in the 16th International Conference on Competition and Regulation, organised by CRESSE – Competition and Regulation European Summer School and Conference.

CRESSE is a network of academics and professionals, practicing in competition or regulatory authorities, consultancies and legal practices, with an interest in competition policy and sectoral regulation. It was initiated by Prof. Yannis Katsoulacos in 2005.

Programme

Our directors Hans W. Friederiszick and Alena Kozakova are looking forward to the 2022 Hal White Antitrust Conference on June 23, 2022 in Washington, DC – a conference connecting the antitrust community with knowledge, ideas and lively discussions. Bates White Economic Consulting and E.CA Economics maintain an exclusive cooperative partnership to provide international antitrust services in the United States and Europe.

On 14 April 2022, the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published E.CA Economics’ ex post evaluation of its approach to vertical mergers. The CMA retained us to look at four recent mergers with a vertical component and evaluate whether CMA’s assessment was reasonable and correct. We also reviewed the current thinking on vertical mergers to help the CMA learn from the latest developments.

We found that the CMA carried out, on the whole, high quality analysis with only a small number of analytical choices we would not have made. The CMA appeared more lenient to vertical mergers than horizontal mergers, perhaps more than would be justified, although we did not conclude the CMA should have blocked any of the mergers we studied in detail. We also found that the CMA would need to continue to evolve its toolkit to capture accurately the complexities that vertical mergers bring, including making potentially uncomfortable decisions in the platform markets space.

Read the study

Press release

E.CA Economics will assist the European Commission in the revision of the Railway Guidelines. Together with LEAR, University of East Anglia and Sheppard Mullin, E.CA will provide an impact assessment support study for the review of the Community guidelines on State aid for railway undertakings. It will provide factual, analytical and data inputs that contribute to ensuring that the Guidelines set the rules applicable to the rail sector and to the entire value chain involved in the modal shift from road to rail and other less polluting transport modes. Over 140 stakeholders (among others granting authorities, regulatory bodies, industry associations, and railway and logistics companies) from 13 different countries will be contacted via surveys and targeted interviews to collect relevant data and meaningful insights. Industry experts from Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds will be supporting the consortium.

As part of the revision process of the current Community Guidelines on State aid for railway undertakings (Railway Guidelines) from 2008, the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission (DG COMP) has commissioned this external support study. The fitness check of the Railway Guidelines conducted in 2019 and 2020 confirmed that the Guidelines are not fit-for-purpose and require a full-fledged review to align them with the market and regulatory developments, in particular to make them fit for the full liberalisation of the rail sector following in particular the adoption of the Fourth Railway Package in 2016. This review is also required to support the EU policy priorities in the context of the Green Deal and the increased importance of a modal shift from road to less polluting transport modes such as rail and inland waterways in order to meet the Union’s emissions reduction target by 2050.