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Competition Policy

Estimating the costs of non-competition

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On the afternoon of 23 June 2022, the Chief Economist and the Principal Adviser for economic ex-post evaluation of DG Competition hosted a virtual workshop titled Estimating the costs of non-competition for the EU economy.

 

Programme

13:30 – 13:40 – Welcome and introduction 

  • Pierre Régibeau (Chief Economist - DG Comp)
  • presentation by Thomas Deisenhofer (Principal Adviser for ex-post economic evaluation – DG Comp)

13:40 – 14:15 – Session 1 - introductory keynote:  Estimating the ‘costs of non-competition’ – What is the State of the Art?

The ‘costs of non-competition’ for society may be created via a variety of channels. Malfunctioning competition has an impact on allocative efficiency, productive efficiency, dynamic efficiency and it may affect the functioning of input markets, including - notably - the labour market.

The session aims to provide an overview of the different channels through which malfunctioning competition may have wider macroeconomic effects, discuss the  interactions between those channels and consider how the effects stemming from different channels can best be aggregated. On that basis, it will seek to sketch out a research agenda in this field, specifically in relation to the EU.

Speaker:

Chair: Pierre Régibeau (Chief Economist - DG Comp)

Moderators: Moritz Suppliet / Guillaume Débarbat   (CET – DG Comp)

14:15 – 15:30 - Session 2:  Insights derived from history, country studies and natural experiments

Changes in the competition regime and its enforcement - over time and across countries - can provide valuable insights on the long term macro-economic effects of competition. This session aims to discuss relevant research in this field. 

Speakers:

Chair: Vincent Verouden (PA team – DG Comp)

Moderators:  Moritz Suppliet / Guillaume Débarbat (CET – DG Comp)

15:45 – 17:00 - Session 3:  The impact of product market competition on labour

The interaction between product market competition and input markets, and labour markets in particular, has received increasing attention in recent years. Increased market power in product markets may result in reduced input demand as well as monopsony power effects. This session is to provide a contemporary view on the main empirical learnings obtained thus far, and to define an upcoming research agenda.

Speakers:

Chair: Guillaume Débarbat (CET – DG Comp)

Moderators: Moritz Suppliet / Guillaume Débarbat (CET – DG Comp) 

17:00 – 18:15 - Session 4:  Recent Experiences with Modelling the Macro-economic Impact of Competition

This session will showcase recent research work aimed at estimating the macro-economic impact of malfunctioning competition. It will discuss the channels through which the increase or decrease in competition is modelled and the shocks and scenarios considered in the modelling exercises to estimate the macroeconomic impact of competition.  It will present the benchmarks used to measure a given state of competition in an economy/group of economies (1) against a counterfactual without functioning competition and/or (2) against a counterfactual where competition is effective or at least ‘workable’. 

It will also seek to discuss the orders of magnitude of the different modelled effects of malfunctioning competition on GDP and compare them to empirical/historical observations in the literature.

Speakers:

Chair: Hans Zenger (CET – DG Comp)

Moderators: Guillaume Débarbat / Moritz Suppliet (CET – DG Comp)


18:15 – 18:30 - Closing remarks

  • Thomas Deisenhofer (Principal Adviser for ex-post economic evaluation – DG Comp

 

More information and contact : COMP-SOCatec [dot] europa [dot] eu (COMP-SOC[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)