Upcoming Events
Symposium on Innovation and Competition in the Digital Economy
Part I: Big Tech, Competition & Innovation in the Digital Economy
Jeffrey Prince (Indiana University)
International Measurements of Data Privacy Preferences, with Implications for Business and Policy
Abstract: Through two separate projects, one published and one under review, we have assembled one of the most internationally expansive collections of privacy preference estimates to date, covering twelve countries that represent approximately one third of the global population. The first, which we administered in 2019, examined relative data privacy preferences across six countries, with a heavy focus on Latin America (United States, Germany, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina). These surveys pertained to respondents’ wireless carrier, Facebook use, checking account at a bank, and smartphone. The second set of surveys, administered in 2022, also allows for examination of relative data privacy preferences, with additional features that allow for measurement of preferences for data localization, across an even wider range of countries, both geographically and culturally (United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, South Korea, Japan, and India). These surveys pertained to respondents’ financial institution, healthcare app, home smart device, smartphone, and social media. Together, the two sets of surveys cover a wide range of data types, with some overlap across platforms and years. Data categories include: financial, health, biometric, social, location, and tastes (e.g., music preferences). During this talk, I will summarize main findings across these two studies along with business and policy implications and insights. Bio: Jeff Prince is Professor and Chair of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He is also the Harold A. Poling Chair in Strategic Management. His specialized fields of research include industrial organization, applied econometrics, strategy, and regulation. He served as Chief Economist at the Federal Communications Commission during 2019 and 2020. At the FCC, he advised the Commission on economic policy, auction design, data analytics, and antitrust matters. Professor Prince has been recognized for excellence in both his research and his teaching during his time at the Kelley School and while at Cornell. He is an author of multiple textbooks covering a range of core microeconomic and econometric principles in managerial economics and predictive analytics. His research focus is on technology markets and telecommunications, having published works on dynamic demand for computers, Internet adoption and usage, the inception of online/offline product competition, telecom bundling, the valuation of product features, digital platforms, and data privacy. His research also encompasses topics such as household-level risk aversion, airline quality competition, and regulation in healthcare and real estate markets. His works have appeared in top general interest journals in both economics and management, including the American Economic Review, the International Economic Review, Management Science, and the Academy of Management Journal. He has also published in top journals in industrial organization, including the Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, and the International Journal of Industrial Organization. He is currently a co-editor at the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, and is on the board of editors at Information Economics and Policy. |
Vaibhav Garg (Comcast Cable)
Beyond Sticks and Carrots: A Vision for AI Swaraj
Abstract: Current approaches to regulate and manage the risks of AI revolve around two themes. First, treats it as a public good and strives to reduce harm via penalties, either ex ante or ex post. Second, treats it as a private good and hopes to engender safer AI via incentives, financial and otherwise. Yet a third way is to approach AI as a common pool resource, its ecosystem resources being data, algorithms, and compute. This framing offers the option of making possible policy interventions grounded is Ostrom’s framework and philosophically a Gandhian school of governance. Such interventions offer three benefits. First, these may be more sustainable, by being more capable of evolution at the speed of technological progress as they will be driven by inherent self-interest. Second, they are more likely to allow for a more equitable distribution of costs and benefits. Finally, they may lead to least amount of wasteful compliance as the underlying goal is to still maximize consumption without diminishing the resource. Bio: Vaibhav Garg is the Executive Director of Cybersecurity & Privacy Research and Public Policy Research at Comcast Cable. He has a PhD in Security Informatics from Indiana University and a M.S. in Information Security from Purdue University. His research investigates the intersection of cybersecurity, economics, and public policy. He has co-authored over thirty peer reviewed publications and received the best paper award at the 2011 eCrime Researcher’s Summit for his work on the economics of cybercrime. He previously served as the Editor in Chief of ACM Computers & Society, where he received the ACM SIGCAS Outstanding Service Award. |
Past Events
Doyne Farmer (University of Oxford)
The Universality and Predictability of Technology Diffusion
Abstract: Technology diffusion follows S-curves, in which deployment initially accelerates and then levels off. We collect data for 47 technologies ranging from canals to mobile phones and show that the shape of their S-curves is remarkably universal. On average, the Gompertz function explains more than half the variance in the level of technology diffusion at the point of maximum growth, suggesting that while each technology’s story is different, the similarities are bigger than the differences. We show that technology S-curve time series suffer from problems of nonstationarity, autocorrelation, heteroscedastic noise and severe estimation bias. We develop a time series model that takes these problems into account, formulate a method for probabilistically forecasting future deployment and study how its forecasting accuracy varies as a function of forecasting horizon and stage of development. Application to solar energy and wind indicates that the renewable energy transition will very likely happen quickly, displacing most fossil fuels within 20 years. Bio: J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. He is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. |
Klaus Miller (HEC Paris)
Consumers’ Perceived Privacy Violations in Online Advertising
Abstract: In response to privacy concerns about personal data collection and use, the online advertising industry has developed privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), of which Google’s Privacy Sandbox is a prominent example. In this research, we apply dual-privacy theory, which postulates consumers have intrinsic and instrumental preferences for privacy, to understand perceived privacy violations (PPVs) for current practices and proposals. The key idea is that different practices and proposals differ in whether individual data leaves the consumer’s machine or not and in how they track and target consumers; these affect, respectively, the intrinsic and instrumental components of privacy preferences differently, leading to different PPVs for different practices. We conducted online studies with U.S. consumers to elicit PPVs for various advertising practices. Our findings confirm the intuition that tracking and targeting consumers under the industry status quo of behavioral targeting results in high PPVs. While new technologies that keep data on users’ devices reduce PPV compared to behavioral targeting, the reduction is minimal. Group-level targeting does not significantly reduce PPV compared to individual-level targeting. However, contextual targeting, which involves no tracking, significantly lowers PPV. Notably, when tracking is absent, consumers show similar preferences for seeing untargeted ads and no ads. Our results indicate that consumer perceptions of privacy violations may differ from technical definitions. A consumer-centric approach, based on, for instance, the dual-privacy theory, is essential for understanding privacy concerns. At a time of significant privacy-related developments, these insights are crucial for industry practitioners and policymakers. (Joint work with Kinshuk Jerath) Bio: I am an Assistant Professor in the Marketing Department at HEC Paris and a Chairholder at the Hi!PARIS Center on Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Science, Business and Society. My research interests meet at the interface between empirical quantitative marketing, management economics, and information systems – specifically, my research concerns customer management, pricing, advertising, and privacy issues in the digital economy. During my Ph.D., as a post-doctoral scholar and afterward, I have been a frequent visiting scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. My research has been published in top-tier academic journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and management-oriented journals. In my research projects, I often collaborate with the industry to answer research questions at scale. In 2022, I was nominated as ISMS Early-Career Scholar. |
Andrei Hagiu (Boston University/Questrom School of Business)
The Emergence of a Platform Trap
Abstract: On platforms such as marketplaces and social networks, the existence of network effects can mean that not only do participating agents benefit when more agents join the platform, but agents’ outside option gets worse. We show that in such a setting, by pricing dynamically, a monopoly platform can induce rational forward-looking agents to join even though participating agents ultimately end up worse of as a result. Agents face a dynamic collective action problem. We explore the limits of such a platform trap, considering factors such as whether agents can observe other agents’ participation decisions and prices, whether the platform can price discriminate, and the relative bargaining power between the platform and individual agents. (Joint work with Julian Wright) Bio: Andrei Hagiu is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in the Strategy group at Harvard Business School and in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at MIT Sloan. Andrei holds a PhD in economics from Princeton University. Andrei’s research and teaching are entirely focused on platform businesses (e.g. Airbnb, Alibaba, Amazon.com, Google, Grab, Facebook, iPhone, PlayStation, Uber, Upwork, etc.) and their unique strategic challenges. He leverages the insights from his research to advise and angel invest in startups attempting to build platforms and marketplaces and to consult with large companies seeking to turn their products into platforms. |
Ingmar Weber (Saarland University)
Collected for Profit, Repurposed for Research: Advertising Audience Esti-mates as a Data Source
Abstract: Facebook, Google, TikTok & Co. generate their revenue from advertising. To offer advertisers with targeting capabilities, these companies collect large amounts of user data to build elaborate profiles. Based on these profiles an advertiser can then choose to target only, say, female Facebook users living in Norte de Santander, Colombia, who are aged 18-24, who used to live in Venezuela, and who have access to an iOS device. To help advertisers in planning their advertising campaigns and the related budget needs, the advertising platforms provide so-called audience estimates on how many of their users match the provided targeting criteria. In the example above, Facebook estimates that there are 1,800 matching users. – I’ll describe how, we’re tapping into these audience estimates to (i) monitor international migration, (ii) track digital gender gaps, and (iii) map wealth inequalities. We consistently find that, despite fake profiles, sampling bias, and noise in the inference algorithms, data derived from the advertising platforms provides valuable information that is complementary to other data sources. At the same time, our work shows the risk of identifying vulnerable groups, rather than individuals, which is often not adequately considered in discussions focused on individual privacy. Bio: Ingmar is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in AI at Saarland University where holds the Chair for Societal Computing. This interdisciplinary area comprises (i) computing of society, i.e. the measurement of different social phenomena, in particular using non-traditional data sources, and (ii) computing for society, i.e. working with partners on implementing solutions to help address societal challenges. Before joining Saarland University Ingmar was the Re-search Director for Social Computing at the Qatar Computing Research Institute. |
Jeanine Miklós-Thal (University of Rochester)
Digital Hermits
Abstract: When users share multidimensional data about themselves with a firm, the firm learns about the correlations between different dimensions of user data. We incorporate this type of learning into a model of a data market in which a firm acquires data from users with privacy concerns. Each user can share no data, only nonsensitive data, or their full data with the firm. As the firm collects more data and becomes better at drawing inferences about a user’s privacy-sensitive data from their nonsensitive data, the share of new users who share no data (“digital hermits”) grows. This growth of digital hermits occurs even though the firm offers higher compensation for a user’s nonsensitive data and a user’s full data as its ability to draw inferences improves. At the same time, the share of new users who share their full data also grows. The model thus predicts a polarization of users’ data-sharing choices away from nonsensitive data sharing to no sharing and full sharing. Our model suggests that recent privacy policies, which are focused on control of data rather than inferences, may be misplaced. Bio: Jeanine Miklós-Thal is the Fred H. Gowen Professor of Economics & Management at the Simon Business School, University of Rochester, and a Research Fellow at CEPR, DIW, and MaCCi. Jeanine’s primary research interests lie in industrial organization and digital economics. Her work has been published in leading academic journals in both economics and management, including the Journal of Political Economy, the RAND Journal of Economics, Management Science, and Marketing Science. Jeanine currently serves as Co-Editor at the International Journal of Industrial Organization and as Associate Editor at the RAND Journal of Economics and at Management Science. Jeanine holds a PhD in Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics. |
Stefano Puntoni
Offshoring, Automation, and the Legitimacy of Efficiency
Abstract: Collective layoffs can occur for many reasons, often related to a firm’s pursuit of greater efficiency and cost reduction, and they tend to trigger negative reactions among the public. Anecdotal evidence suggests that offshoring, one of the most controversial and politicized aspects of globalization, evokes particularly negative reactions. We propose a social contract account of consumer reactions to collective layoffs and demonstrate differential consumer responses to collective layoffs due to offshoring versus other reasons, such as automation. Layoffs due to offshoring are perceived as an especially egregious violation of the normative expectation that firms should support the local community. Data from eleven experimental studies (N = 6,773), public consumer responses to layoffs in a large online community (N = 29,045), and layoff announcements in the European Union (N = 1,261) confirm that consumers react more negatively to collective layoffs due to offshoring compared to other reasons. Supporting our social contract account, the negative effect of offshoring is stronger when offshoring affects workers in the consumers’ home (vs. foreign) country, when the firm is domestic (vs. foreign), and when most customers are domestic (vs. foreign). Bio: Stefano Puntoni is the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School. He holds a PhD in marketing from London Business School and a degree in Statistics and Economics from the University of Padova, in his native Italy. His research has appeared in several leading journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Nature Human Behavior, and Management Science. He also writes regularly for managerial outlets such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. Most of his ongoing research investigates how new technology is changing consumption and society. He is currently an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research and at the Journal of Marketing. Stefano teaches in the areas of marketing strategy, new technologies, brand management, and decision making. |
Shayne Longpre
Consent in Crisis:The Rapid Decline of the AI Data Commons
Abstract: General-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) systems are built on massive swathes of public web data, assembled into corpora such as C4, RefinedWeb, and Dolma. To our knowledge, we conduct the first, large-scale, longitudinal audit of the consent protocols for the web domains underlying AI training corpora. Our audit of 14, 000 web domains provides an expansive view of crawlable web data and how codified data use preferences are changing over time. We observe a proliferation of AIspecific clauses to limit use, acute differences in restrictions on AI developers, as well as general inconsistencies between websites’ expressed intentions in their Terms of Service and their robots.txt. We diagnose these as symptoms of ineffective web protocols, not designed to cope with the widespread re-purposing of the internet for AI. Our longitudinal analyses show that in a single year (2023-2024) there has been a rapid crescendo of data restrictions from web sources, rendering ~5%+ of all tokens in C4, or 28%+ of the most actively maintained, critical sources in C4, fully restricted from use. For Terms of Service crawling restrictions, a full 45% of C4 is now restricted. If respected or enforced, these restrictions are rapidly biasing the diversity, freshness, and scaling laws for general-purpose AI systems. We hope to illustrate the emerging crises in data consent, for both developers and creators. The foreclosure of much of the open web will impact not only commercial AI, but also non-commercial AI and academic research. Link to paper: https://www.dataprovenance.org/Consent_in_Crisis.pdf (Longpre et al. 2024) Bio: Shayne Longpre is a PhD candidate at MIT. His research focus is on the data that trains AI models, as well their societal impact and governance. He leads the Data Provenance Initiative, a research collective of 50+ volunteers passionate about tracing, demystifying, and improving the data used to train AI systems. He also led the open letter encouraging companies to protect independent AI safety research into proprietary models. The letter was co-signed by 350+ researchers, journalists, and advocates in the field. His work has been covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, 404 Media, VentureBeat, MIT Tech Review, and IEEE Spectrum |
Annika Stöhr
Price Effects of Horizontal Mergers - A Retrospective on Retrospectives
Abstract The comprehensive review of ex-post merger studies presented assesses the price effects of horizontal transactions to determine whether there are common post-merger price effects, both overall and in specific markets with the aim to derive implications for policy makers and competition authorities in terms of effective merger enforcement and competition policy. The review combines and further analyzes the results of 52 retrospective studies on 82 mergers or horizontal transactions. Overall, it will be shown that the sector in which the respective transaction takes place alone is not a strong indicator of the direction of price-related merger effects. In contrast, the ‘size’ or ‘importance’ of a transaction, as well as market concentration seem to be correlated with post-transaction price increases, especially in already highly concentrated markets. The review and presentation are intended to demonstrate the overall importance of ex post evaluations of antitrust decisions for ex ante competition policy and enforcement.
Bio: After studying media economics, Annika Stöhr completed her PhD on “Economic Evaluation and Reform Implications of German Competition Policy” with a focus on merger control and in particular on non-economic effects and so-called public interests that (should) potentially influence competition regulation. Her research generally operates at the intersection of competition economics, competition law and competition policy, under the premise that innovation and dynamism are both facilitators and goals of functioning competition (regulation). Her current work deals with the regulation of large digital ecosystems, e.g. through Section 19a GWB and the DMA and DSA, as well as with the regulation of algorithmic recommender systems in particular.
Her research benefits from more than two years of professional experience at the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action. Since April 2023 she is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Economic Theory at Ilmenau University of Technology.
Christian Peukert
Strategic Behavior and AI Training Data
Abstract: Human-created works represent critical data inputs to artificial intelligence (AI). Strategic behavior can play a major role for AI training datasets, be it in limiting access to existing works or in deciding which types of new works to create or whether to create new works at all. We examine creators’ behavioral change when their works become training data for AI. Specifically, we focus on contributors on Unsplash, a popular stock image platform with about 6 million high-quality photos and illustrations. In the summer of 2020, Unsplash launched an AI research program by releasing a dataset of 25,000 images for commercial use. We study contributors’ reactions, comparing contributors whose works were included in this dataset to contributors whose works were not included. Our results suggest that treated contributors left the platform at a higherthan-usual rate and substantially slowed down the rate of new uploads. Professional and more successful photographers react stronger than amateurs and less successful photographers. We also show that affected users changed the variety and novelty of contributions to the platform, with long-run implications for the stock of works potentially available for AI training. Taken together, our findings highlight the trade-off between interests of rightsholders and promoting innovation at the technological frontier. We discuss implications for copyright and AI policy.
Paper available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4807979 (joint work with Florian Abeillon, Jérémie Haese, Franziska Kaiser, and Alexander Staub)
Christian Peukert is an Associate Professor for Digitization, Innovation and Intellectual Property at the University of Lausanne, Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne), Switzerland. He studies how digital technologies and their regulation affect firms, consumers and markets with a focus on the economics of data and artificial intelligence, and intellectual property. His work has been published in Management Science, Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, and other journals.
Tamar Meshulam
What happens when green technology meets reality: On the environmental impacts of the digital sharing economy
Abstract: The digital sharing economy is commonly seen as a promising circular consumption model that could potentially deliver environmental benefits through more efficient use of existing product stocks. Yet whether sharing is indeed more environmentally benign than prevalent consumption models remains unclear. First, sharing might not displace the product it is expected to. For example, Uber might displace walking rather than private cars. Second, sharing might necessitate additional products and services to support the sharing operation. Finally, economic incentives to participate in the sharing economy may raise demand for durable products. Our research suggests that the environmental impact of the sharing economy is more nuanced than previously thought.
Tamar Meshulam is a Ph.D. student at Ben-Gurion University, focusing on researching the environmental impacts of technology, particularly within the sharing economy, utilizing data science and industrial economy methodologies. With a background in both Environmental Management (M.Sc.) and Computer Science (B.Sc.) from Tel Aviv University, Tamar brings a multidisciplinary approach to her research. Prior to her academic pursuits, Tamar accumulated over 15 years of experience in the IT industry. Notably, she received recognition for her contributions, including the PLATE Best Student Paper Award and 3rd place in the ISIE Best Poster Award in 2021. Tamar’s research is generously supported by the Ben Gurion School for Sustainability and Climate Change, the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies, and the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF).
Georgios Petropoulos
Industrial Data Sharing: The Unintended Consequences of the EU's Data Act
Abstract: The Data Act is a new law forthcoming in the European Union that regulates access to the data produced by IoT devices, especially in an industrial context such as smart manufacturing or smart farming. It aims at facilitating the emergence of new, innovative data-driven services that ultimately yield more efficient market outcomes and higher consumer surplus.
We offer a first analytical study of the economic consequences of the Data Act. Our analysis suggests that due to the broad application scope of the Data Act, in many situations, the Data Act may likely reduce, and not increase market efficiency. In particular, the Data Act runs potentially contrary to its policy objective when new data-driven services are substitutes to the IoT device manufacturer’s own service, and the IoT manufacturer only has limited market power; or when the new service is a complement to the IoT device manufacturer’s own service, irrespective of market power. Our analysis suggests that the Data Act should adopt a more targeted approach, depending on the type of data-driven service seeking access to data, and the market power of the IoT manufacturer that is required to provide data access.
The paper is a joint work with Jan Krämer.
Georgios Petropoulos is a research associate at the Initiative on the Digital Economy of the MIT Sloan School of Management and a digital fellow at the Digital Economy Lab of Stanford University. In the summer of 2024, he will become an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
His research focuses on the implications of digital technologies on innovation, competition policy, and labor markets. He is studying how we should regulate big digital platforms as well as how the adoption of robots and artificial intelligence affect labor productivity and work.
Previously, Georgios was a post-doctoral researcher at MIT Sloan. He holds a B.Sc. in Physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an M.Sc. in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics from Tilburg University, and a PhD in Economics.
Elizaveta Kuznetsova
Tackling Online Misinformation with Generative AI: A comparison of ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot
Abstract: The talk will cover a recent study on the ability of two large language model (LLM)-based chatbots, ChatGPT and Bing Chat, rebranded to Microsoft Copilot, to detect veracity of political information. The study uses AI auditing methodology to investigate how chatbots evaluate true, false, and borderline statements on five topics: COVID-19, Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Holocaust, climate change, and LGBTQ+ related debates. It compares how the chatbots perform in high- and low-resource languages by using prompts in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. Furthermore, it explores the ability of chatbots to evaluate statements according to political communication concepts of disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy theory, using definition-oriented prompts. The discussion will focus on the potential of LLM-based chatbots in tackling different forms of false information in online environments, pointing at the substantial variation in terms of how such potential is realized due to specific factors, such as language of the prompt or the topic. It will also provide an outlook into the future studies using similar methodology on a larger set of misinformation items in more languages.
Elizaveta Kuznetsova is a senior researcher working at the intersection of Communication Studies and International Relations. She leads a research group ‘Platform Algorithms and Digital Propaganda’ at Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin. Her research focus is on digital propaganda, social media platforms and international media. Elizaveta holds a PhD in International Politics from City, University of London. She is a former fellow at the Davis Center, Harvard University and at the Center for the European Studies at Boston University.
Giulio Matarazzi & Germán Oscar Johannsen
Position Statement of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition on the Implementation of the Digital Markets Act
Abstract: The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition published a position statement on the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), laying down harmonised rules for core platform services provided or offered by gatekeepers. The Institute raises awareness about the possible overly broad blocking effects of the DMA on national rules, which may have the unintended consequences of privileging gatekeepers by jeopardizing future national legislative initiatives. This ultimately obstructs the achievement of contestability and fairness in digital markets. A complementary application of competition rules and effective enforcement of the DMA is, against this backdrop, crucial. Yet there is uncertainty over administrative enforcement mechanisms, and it is unclear what role private enforcement plays in the current legal design of the DMA. The position statement identifies and examines challenges in the implementation of the DMA, along with recommendations for overcoming them.
Link to the position statement: https://doi.org/10.1093/grurint/ikad067
Joint work with: Josef Drexl, Beatriz Conde Gallego, Begoña González Otero, Liza Herrmann, Jörg Hoffmann, Lukas Kestler
Giulio Matarazzi is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. His research is focused on competition law, and the regulation of digital platforms, the internet, and telecommunications, with a particular focus on the Digital Markets Act and the European Electronic Communications Regulatory Framework. His professional background includes a period as an associate at BonelliErede Law Firm at the Antitrust Department, where he dealt with competition law and unfair commercial practices cases.
Germán Oscar Johannsen is a PhD student at the University of Munich and a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. His research centers on competition law and policy in the digital markets. As a research fellow, he has also developed lines of research on big data merger control, Internet regulation, and data governance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Germán is also a visiting lecturer of competition law at the Universidad Católica de Chile, and active blogger on tech and competition issues in Latin America.
Carlo Reggiani
Data sharing or algorithm sharing?
Abstract: Data combination and analytics can generate valuable insights for firms and society as a whole. Multiple firms can do so by means of new technologies that bring the algorithm to the data (“algorithm sharing”) or, more conventionally, by sharing the data (“data sharing”). Algorithm-sharing technologies are gaining traction because of their advantages in terms of privacy, security, and environmental impact. We present a model that allows us to study the economic incentives generated by these technologies for both firms and a platform facilitating data combination. We find that, first, the platform chooses data sharing unless algorithm sharing’s analytics are sufficiently superior to those associated to data sharing. Second, we identify the properties of the analytics benefit function that ensure that algorithm sharing results in a higher total data contribution. Third, we highlight scenarios in which, in presence of data externalities, there can be a mismatch between the choice of the platform and the preference of a social planner.
Carlo Reggiani is a Research Fellow at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Seville, and a Lecturer in Microeconomics at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on Industrial Organization and the Digital Economy, with a particular focus on topics regarding the economic impacts of data and platforms. His research has been published in such journals as the European Economic Review, the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, among others.
Jon McLoone
Synergy of Minds: Balancing Generative AI, Symbolic AI, and Human Intelligence in the Future of Education
Abstract: While the arrival of Generative AI has certainly changed the world it does not, and will not, provide for all the intelligence needs of the world. This talk will discuss the intrinsic limitations of Generative AI in comparison to Symbolic AI (computation) and human intelligence and how future technologies must leverage all three to be most effective.
The talk will then discuss how our current educational system is teaching the wrong content and skills to prepare students for the AI age. With particular focus on computational thinking, a roadmap for a future curriculum will be introduced.
Jon McLoone, Director of Technical Communication and Strategy at Wolfram, is central to driving the company’s technical business strategy and leading the consulting solutions team. With over 25 years of experience working with Wolfram Technologies, Jon has helped in directing software development, system design, technical marketing, corporate policy, business strategies and much more. Jon gives regular keynote appearances and media interviews on topics such as the Future of AI, Enterprise Computation Strategies and Education Reform, across multiple fields including healthcare, fintech and data science. He holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Durham. Jon is also Co-founder and Director of Development for computerbasedmath.org, an organisation dedicated to fundamental reform of maths education and the introduction of computational thinking. The movement is now a worldwide force in re-engineering the STEM curriculum with early projects in Estonia, Sweden and Africa.
Paul Nemitz
How can AI and its creators serve democracy?
Abstract: Plurality and homogeneity, being and ought, yesterday’s data and the imagination of the (as yet) non-existent, structural conservatism and the inertia of technology v. the drive of humans for political reform, centralisation of power v. division of powers with checks and balances: These are just a few themes on which the culture of global platform technology and AI on the one hand and and human visions of freedom and a democratic future on the other hand clash. But why are these clashes important ? Is it possible that Tech platforms, AI and the ideology of technological solutions as a collateral damage strengthen populist and authoritarian rule ? And that democracy is in a pincer movement between Tech platforms, AI and authoritarianism ?
While China is a dictatorship and the US Democracy in a deep crisis, these two powers are held out as models of technological leadership. But do we want to live in a world in which either global corporations or authoritarian political leaders rule, and freedom of individuals as well as democracy have no primacy over technology, business models and absolutist ideologies ?
In his talk, Paul Nemitz discusses how engineers and programmers can re- engage with democracy and stay clear in their work of both the neoliberal wet dream of a world in which technology and technological competition alone determine the rules of how we live, how power, opportunity and wealth is distributed in society and a world view which degrades technology to a tool of totalitarian government’s absolute rule over people.
What the world needs today are “Engineers for democracy”, thus people who design platforms and AI which strengthen and support Democracy rather than undermining and destroying it. At the beginning of any such project stands an Intention and an Understanding why democracy is worth developing for.
Giovanna Massarotto
Proposing a Computer Science Approach to Antitrust
Abstract: Computer scientists use the Byzantine Generals Problem as an analogy for the coordination problem among computers in a distributed network by considering that some computers might be unreliable. The Byzantine Generals Problem is a ‘trust’ problem. In my paper “Using Computer Science to Detect Cheat Tolerant Cartels” I use this problem and its algorithmic solutions to analyze how potentially computers can build strong cartels that can tolerate cheating, thus unreliable computers. These solutions work in abstract, thus potentially in both a computer and non-computer situations. Using the case of cheat tolerant cartels, I propose a computer science approach to complement the present law-and-economics antitrust analysis.
Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4617160
Giovanna Massarotto is an Academic Fellow at the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC) at the University of Pennsylvania and an affiliate of the University College London’s Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT). Massarotto’s scholarship focuses on how technology affects society and the intersection of law, economics, and computer science. She is an active scholar and author of Antitrust Settlements: How a Simple Agreement Can Drive the Economy, published by Wolters Kluwer. In addition to the book, she has published multiple articles that investigate antitrust and regulatory issues related to blockchain, digital markets and software. Massarotto attained her PhD at Bocconi University in Milan.
Scott Shenker
Raising Our Sights (A Long Rant From an Accidental Engineer)
Abstract: Engineers typically seek progress through technical innovation. This approach has brought us many wonders, from the transistor to the Internet to virtualization and the cloud. However, some forms of progress are less about technical innovations and more about changing the structure and behavior of the overall technology ecosystem (e.g., the companies involved and how they interact with each other and with customers). This talk will discuss how we can “raise our sights” to address these larger issues — in areas such as the Internet, the cloud, and personal privacy — and what that will require from our own ecosystem of innovation.
Scott Shenker spent his academic youth studying theoretical physics but soon gave up chaos theory for computer science. Continuing to display a remarkably short attention span, his research over the years has wandered from performance modeling and networking to game theory and economics. Unable to focus on any single topic, his current research projects include various topics in networking, system design, and privacy mechanisms. However, despite all these distractions and many decades of therapy, he has never overcome his obsession with Internet architecture. Unable to hold a steady job, he currently splits his time between the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and the UC Berkeley Computer Science Division. He is indebted to his many collaborators for inspiring him intellectually while patiently enduring his terrible sense of humor and his tyrannical approach to collaborative writing.
Mikkel Flyverbom
Refractions and Reconfigurations of Pasts, Presents and Futures – Articulating the Relations between Data Integration and Algorithmic Predictions in Data Analysis Platforms
Abstract: This talk offers a conceptualization and analytical framework for the study of data analysis platforms. Starting from a theoretical focus on how data, algorithms and technological systems work as ‘digital prisms’ that refract and reconfigure social phenomena, my work articulates how data integration and data-driven prediction can be seen as forms of knowledge production that allow for new dynamics of seeing, knowing and governing. On this backdrop, the talk highlights five analytical dimensions of data analysis platforms (domains, datasets, models, humans and temporality) and offers a conceptualization of three different types and uses of data analysis platforms (merging, prognosis and projection). Taken together, the components of this analytical framework may guide conceptual and empirical investigations in this area of research. My goal is to contribute to emergent work seeking to articulate the shapes and workings of data analysis platforms as a sub-type of digital platforms. The theorization and empirical study of data analysis platforms is an important endeavor that may help us understand phenomena such as the digitalization and datafication of work and knowledge production, the reliance of the public sector on commercial platforms from the private sector, and broader questions about how data, algorithms and digital systems are used in attempts to grasp and shape futures.
Mikkel Flyverbom is Professor of Communication and Digital Transformations at the Department of Management, Society and Communication, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Also, he is founding academic director of the BSc in Business Administration and Digital Management program at Copenhagen Business School.
His research on digital transformations, data, internet governance, and tech companies has been published in leading international journals, such as Business & Society, The Information Society,Telecommunications Policy, Organization Studies, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization, as well as a number of books. His most recent book, titled ‘The Digital Prism: Transparency and Managed Visibilities in a Datafied World’ has been published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.
Mikkel Flyverbom holds a position as research fellow at The Centre for Information Technology and Society at University of California, Santa Barbara, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, New York University and Rutgers University.
He is a member of the Danish government’s Data Ethics Council and Digitalization Council, and chairman of the Danish government’s Expert Group on Tech Giants. Also, he writes a tech column for the Danish newspaper Politiken, and is a widely used expert on digital transformations and the tech industry.
Shiva Shekhar
The Bright Side of the GDPR: Welfare-Improving Privacy Management
Abstract: We study the GDPR’s opt-in requirement in a model with a firm that provides a digital service and consumers who are heterogeneous in their valuations of the firm’s service as well as the privacy costs incurred when sharing personal data with the firm. We show that the GDPR boosts demand for the service by allowing consumers with high privacy costs to buy the service without sharing data. The increased demand leads to a higher price but a smaller quantity of shared data. If the firm’s revenue is largely usage-based rather than data-based, then both the firm’s profit and consumer surplus increase after the GDPR, implying that the GDPR can be welfare-improving. But if the firm’s revenue is largely from data monetization, then the GDPR can reduce the firm’s profit and consumer surplus.
Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4569880
Joint work with Chongwoo Choe (Monash University) and Noriaki Matsushima (Osaka University).
Shiva Shekhar is currently an Assistant Professor at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management (TiSEM). His research is primarily focused on the competitive strategies of platforms and their effects on consumer welfare. As a research affiliate at the CESifo Network and a member of the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC), Shiva is involved in extending his research to managerial and policy domains, often sharing insights with national competition authorities.
Shiva’s professional background includes a period as an Economist at Compass Lexecon from October 2018 to December 2020. During his tenure, he contributed to the analysis of several high-profile mergers and multiple antitrust cases across various sectors. This experience has driven his research towards having a direct societal impact.
Nikolas Guggenberger
Moderating Monopolies
Abstract: Industrial organization predetermines content moderation online. At the core of today’s dysfunctions in the digital public sphere is a market power problem. Meta, Google, Apple, and a few other digital platforms control the infrastructure of the digital public sphere. A tiny group of corporations governs online speech, causing systemic problems to public discourse and individual harm to stakeholders. Current approaches to content moderation build on a deeply flawed market structure, addressing symptoms of systemic failures at best and cementing ailments at worst.
Link to paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4569880
Nikolas Guggenberger is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. He also holds an appointment at the Cullen College of Engineering’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Guggenberger’s work focuses on antitrust, law & technology, privacy, and regulation. He has frequently advised government entities and served as expert witness on technology policy, financial markets regulation, and media law.
Before joining the University of Houston Law Center, Guggenberger was a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project. Guggenberger held an appointment as the RWTÜV Foundation Assistant Professor at the University of Münster School of Law in Germany and taught at the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of São Paulo Law School. He also served as an advisor on banking and financial markets regulation and monetary and economic policy to Jakob von Weizsäcker at the European Parliament in Brussels. He clerked in Freiburg, Germany, and holds degrees from Freiburg University (JD-equivalent & PhD) and Stanford Law School (LLM). Guggenberger is in the first cohort of UH Presidential Frontier Faculty, a university-wide integrated interdisciplinary faculty hiring campaign to respond to federal priorities and societal challenges.
Santiago Andrés Azcoitia and Alba Ribera Martínez
Data Marketplaces and the Data Governance Act: A Business Model Perspective
Abstract: The Data Governance Act sets up a harmonised framework for the development of trustworthy data intermediation services in the EU to enable a neutral and competitive environment for data sharing. These new regulations create some friction with the trends observed in the market, and with the business models data intermediaries are adopting.
This talk maps out some of these technical frictions and regulatory challenges arising in the data economy and marketplaces. First, it sets out the regulatory framework around the EU’s digital strategy, with a particular focus on the Digital Governance Act and the burdens imposed on data intermediaries as set out from their definition in Article 2(11), while also touching upon the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Second, it discusses real examples of friction points arising from the legal separation of data intermediaries, from potential limitations to data pricing stemming from the regulation, and from emerging trends such as federated learning or model-based data intermediaries.
Dr. Santiago Andrés is a researcher focused on the field of data economics. He has 25 years of working experience in R&D, consulting and regulation in the ICT sector. Santiago holds a PhD in Telematics Engineering from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, a Masters in Economics from Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, and a Masters in Telecom Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He currently works in the Data Transparency Group at IMDEA Network Institute in Madrid. Before joining IMDEA, he worked as a senior consultant in Axon Consulting and Deloitte, and as a project manager in Telefónica R&D.
Alba‘s research is centred on the competitive dynamics underlying digital markets and data operations from the legal perspective of EU competition law. Her latest insights contribute to the larger discussion on the Digital Markets Act and the European Union’s digital strategy. She is a PhD Student at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid and teaches competition law at Universidad Villanueva. She also occupies several editorial positions, such as in Kluwer Competition Law Blog and at the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice.
Tobias Fiebig
13 Propositions on an Internet for a “Burning World”
Abstract: In this paper, we outline thirteen propositions on the state of the Internet and digital infrastructures. The core of our theses is that the centralizing Internet of today will not be sustainable and resilient, neither in terms of its energy needs nor in the face of a “burning world”, i.e., the rapidly changing world, facing an unprecedented human-made climate disaster and countless other shifts we currently find ourselves living in. Furthermore, we highlight that ongoing policy decisions do not necessarily benefit the resilience of the Internet in the future to come. Our propositions are based on our own research contributions published in the past, public discourse, and most certainly rooted in system administration lore and our own experience as system administrators. They are intentionally bold, to form a foundation for discussion, and we make no personal claim to originality and completeness. Finally, we note that, they do not aim at providing simple solutions, but hint at interrelations and challenges we must resolve to survive the future to come.
Tobias works on understanding how we operate networked systems, and how the way we operate them impacts security. For that, he combines classical network measurement with methods from the field of human factors. He got his PhD in 2017, and joined the MPI after being a (permanent position) assistant professor at TU Delft from 2017 to 2022.
Raghavendra Selvan
On the Carbon Footprint of Deep Learning
Abstract: Deep Learning (DL) has transformed several application domains, including computer vision and natural language processing, with new and exciting possibilities. These advancements have been enabled, and accelerated, by large scale computations on massive data which also translate into increased energy- and carbon costs. In this work, we take a look at the carbon footprint of DL across domains, present techniques to quantify it and practices that could improve the environmental sustainability of DL.
Raghavendra Selvan (Raghav) is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen, with joint responsibilities at the Machine Learning (ML) Section (Dept. of Computer Science), Kiehn Lab (Department of Neuroscience) and the Data Science Laboratory. He received his PhD in Medical Image Analysis (University of Copenhagen, 2018), his MSc degree in Communication Engineering in 2015 (Chalmers University, Sweden) and his Bachelor degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering degree in 2009 (BMS Institute of Technology, India). Raghavendra Selvan was born in Bangalore, India.
His current research interests are broadly pertaining Resource Efficient ML, Medical Image Analysis with ML, Quantum Tensor Networks and Graph Neural Networks. Of late, another overarching theme of his research interests lie at the intersection of sustainability and ML where he is interested in investigating sustainability with ML, and also the sustainability of ML.
Juliane Mendelsohn
Should the control of economic power (still) be the main focus of competition policy?
Abstract: This talk explores the historical and current dimensions of the argument that competition policy should focus on a single (albeit broad) goal; namely the control of (economic) power in the private sphere.
The talk is broadly divided into three chapters:
The historical part considers concentration and the legitimacy of private power as the original predicament of liberalism and one of the great paradoxes of modernity and how these assumptions shaped early antitrust and competition law doctrines.
Moving on to doctrines from the 1970’s, it acknowledges the achievements but also critiques the rise of ‘modern’ antitrust and competition policy and its focus on a narrow set of effects and consumer welfare.
Finally, it considers the renewed scepticism about economic power and analyses the novel traits, risks and manifestations of power in the digtial world. It asks whether a single and broad policy aim can still serve competition policy better than a multitude or plethora of goals and what the function of competition law ought to be in the context of new regulatory frameworks.
Relevant Publications
- 2023: Recondsidering Conglomerates – How are digital conglomerates different from those in the past? Theory and implications, The Competition Law Review (forthcoming)
- 2023: Nachhaltigkeit in der Zusammenschlusskontrolle, Jahrbuch Junge Zivilrechtswissenschaft 2022 (forthcoming)
- 2023: Hello, mandated unbundling, my old friend, in: Kirk/Offergeld/Rohmer, Kartellrecht in der Zeitenwende, Nomos
- 2022: Competition, Concentration, and Inequality through the Lens of the Theory of Reflexive Modernisation, in: Broulík/Cseres, Competition Law and Economic Inequality, Hart Studies in Competition Law
- 2022: Regulating Big Tech: From competition policy to sector regulation?, Ilmenau Economic Discussion Papers (forthcoming in ORDO)
- 2021: Die “normative Macht” der Plattformen – Gegenstand der zukünftigen Digitalregulierung? (English: The “normative power” of platforms – the subject of future digital regulation?), MMR Zeitschrift für IT-Recht und Recht der Digitalisierung
Juliane Mendelsohn is Junior-Professor of Law and Economics of Digitization at the Ilmenau University of Technology. Her research focusses on competition and regulatory policy. Other academic interests include civil law, law and economics and legal theory. She completed her PhD on systemic risk and banking crisis Prof. Dr. Heike Schweitzer in 2018 and previously served as academic director of the Master for Business, Competition and Regulatory Law at the Free University of Berlin
Kristóf Gyodi
Sharing economy, platforms and cities: empirical studies on Airbnb
Abstract: Airbnb is a prime example of the success and robust growth of peer-to-peer platforms. While Airbnb has been initially described as a sharing economy platform, providing services based on under-utilized assets, over time the role of professional hosts has increased. The impressive growth and rising professionalisation of Airbnb raise crucial questions about its overall impact on local residents in urban environments. In this presentation, I will provide a brief overview of my research on Airbnb in major European cities. I will present results on:
- To what extent Airbnb is part of the sharing economy
- The relationship between location variables and price
- The spatial patterns of Airbnb
- The spatial differences between listings managed by occasional and professional hosts
- The effectiveness of regulations
The presentation will highlight Airbnb in various major cities, including Berlin, Barcelona and London. The studies are based on geographic data science and spatial econometrics methods.
Kristóf is an assistant professor at the Department of Technological Change at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. He is also a researcher at DELab UW (Digital Economy Lab), an interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Warsaw. Kristóf obtained his PhD in Economics in February 2022. In his thesis, he examined the accommodation services provided via Airbnb in the context of their economic impact in major European cities. His research interests include the economics of platforms, urban issues related to digitalization, and the use of data science methods. Kristóf has published as first author in leading high-impact academic journals in the field of management and computational social science, including Journal of Cleaner Production, Tourism Management, and Quality & Quantity. Besides being a PI in his PhD project funded by the National Science Centre in Poland, Kristóf was also a team member in Horizon 2020 projects (part of the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative) focusing on the identification of the social impact of digital technologies.
Johannes Loh
Competition and value capture in platform markets: Implications for complementor strategy
Abstract: We study how competition between platforms relates to the strategic choices of their complementors. In particular, we are interested in how an increase in competition due to the entry of a new player affects the cooperative value co-creation efforts of complementors on the incumbent platform. Drawing on value capture theory, we argue that this has ambiguous implications for their incentives to continue to cooperate. On the one hand, the entry threatens complementors’ value creation and capture on the incumbent – a demand-side effect that increases cooperation to protect their profitability there. On the other hand, the entrant may constitute an attractive alternative, leading to misaligned value capture expectations on the incumbent – an outside-option effect that decreases their cooperation. We test predictions from a simple theoretical model in the context of the PC video game distribution market: Here, the dominant incumbent “Steam” faced competition with the launch of the “Epic Games Store”. We study two types of (non-)cooperative strategic choices of game developers on Steam: Multihoming by joining the rival, as well as their tendency to participate in Steam sales, which reflects their responsiveness to the incumbent’s most salient orchestration efforts. Our empirical analysis provides broad support for our theoretical predictions: Complementors who are primarily subject to a detrimental demand-side effect increased their cooperation with the incumbent, and those primarily subject to an outside-option effect decreased their cooperation.
Johannes Loh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at BI Norwegian Business School. Before, he obtained a PhD from the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization at LMU Munich. In his research, he studies questions related to the strategic management and governance of digital multi-sided platforms and online communities, and his work has been published in the Strategic Management Journal. Recent examples include projects on the interplay of platform competition and complementor strategy in the context of the PC video game industry, the role of YouTube’s partnership program in incentivizing content supply, and how online social networks facilitate or stifle the exploration of new products by users of a music platform.
Jennifer Allen
How Polarization Can Help Solve the Misinformation Problem
Abstract: When discussing the ills afflicting social media, there is a great deal of concern about the role played by polarization. While polarization may be part of the misinformation problem, here I present evidence that political motivations are also essential for one of the only possibilities for identifying and combatting misinformation at scale — crowdsourced fact-checking. I will discuss data from survey studies conducted on Lucid and observational analyses of data from Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking program. Consistent with theoretical predictions, the results demonstrate that (i) misleading counter-partisan content is flagged more than misleading co-partisan content, (ii) non-misleading content is rarely flagged, and (iii) more politically engaged and extreme users, rather than undermining the system, produce more and better flags. Thus, crowdsourced misinformation identification may succeed because of, rather than in spite of, polarization and political motivations.
Jennifer Allen is a 4th Year PhD Student in the Marketing Department at MIT Sloan School of Management. Her research interests include misinformation, political persuasion, and platform design. Prior to MIT, she worked as a software engineer at Meta on the News team, and as a research assistant at Microsoft Research with the Computational Social Science Group.
Elizabeth Altman
Workforce Ecosystems: Reaching Strategic Goals with People, Partners, and Technologies
Abstract: In this seminar, Prof. Elizabeth J. Altman (University of Massachusetts Lowell) will discuss her multi-year research project with MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Consulting on the Future of the Workforce. Prof. Altman will provide an overview of her book: Workforce Ecosystems: Reaching Strategic Goals with People, Partners, and Technologies (MIT Press). Workforce ecosystems include traditional employees and also external participants such as long term contractors, shorter term gig workers, complementor organizations, and technologies (e.g., AI, bots). This research explores managerial and organizational challenges and opportunities associated with these diverse, networked governance structures, including topics related to integration architectures, technology enablers, and leadership approaches. Illustrative examples derive from interviews with senior leaders in organizations such as Amazon, IBM, Mayo Clinic, NASA, Nike, Roche, Unilever, the U.S. Army, Walmart, and others. Please join us for what is sure to be an engaging and interactive discussion of a timely and relevant topic area.
Elizabeth J. Altman is an associate professor of management at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, research affiliate at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, and guest editor for the Future of the Workforce at MIT Sloan Management Review. She has been a visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and visiting scholar at Harvard Business School. Altman’s research focuses on strategy, innovation, platforms, ecosystems, future of work, and workforce ecosystems. Her research has appeared in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management Studies, and other international journals. Prior to academia, Altman was a Motorola vice president.
Jovana Karanovic
Back to What Truly Matters for the Future of Work: Insights from Multistakeholder Dialogue
Resonating with the topics at the top of the EU agenda, the Reshaping Work Dialogue facilitated constructive discussions among 32 organisations, representing different viewpoints and expertise to further inspire policy-making, as well as provide concrete solutions to the pressing challenges, specifically regarding: (i) the impact of the platform work directive; (ii) AI in the workplace; (iii) youth employment and workplace well-being.
The report can be downloaded under this link: https://reshapingwork.net/dialogue/2023-report/
Jovana Karanovic is Assistant Professor at the Department of Technology and Operations Management (Business Information Management section) at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Jovana’s research is at the intersection of digital technologies and new organizational forms, with a particular focus on platforms. Specifically, Jovana is interested in the new forms of organizing in the platform economy, strategies that digital platforms undertake, and their impact on the broader set of stakeholders, including platform workers. Relatedly, she also explores alternative organizational forms and governance structures in the platform economy, such as platform cooperatives. Her research has most recently been published in a leading business journal – the Journal of Management Studies.
Furthermore, Jovana is the Founder and Managing Director of Reshaping Work – a Foundation that has become a leading authority on the future of work topics. The foundation brings an international community together to discuss and debate the most pressing issues related to new digital trends (e.g., platform economy, artificial intelligence) and the future of work.
She has recently been recognized by the media outlet Silicon Canals among the most powerful female ecosystem builders of Amsterdam’s tech domain for the year 2021. Jovana is also an RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) fellow, and a frequent speaker at academic and industry events, of which the most notable appearances include TEDx Amsterdam and a feature in a Dutch documentary TV series Backlight.
Sarrah Kassem
Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy – Amazon and the Power of Organization
Abstract: Once hidden behind the veils of entrepreneurship, it is now clear that platforms are reshaping the world of work, and Amazon has been a forerunner in setting the trend.
This book examines two key and contrasting Amazon platforms that differ in how they organize workers: its e-commerce platform and digital labor platform (Mechanical Turk). With access to the people who are working at the heart of these platforms, it explores how different working conditions alienate workers, and how, despite these conditions, workers organize within their political-economic contexts to express their agency in traditional and alternative ways.
Written for social scientists studying and researching the platform economy, this is a timely and important analysis of work and workers on the (digital) shop floor.
Sarrah Kassem is a Lecturer and Research Associate in Political Economy at the Department for Political Science at the University of Tübingen. She completed her PhD in 2020 on the alienation and agency of workers in the Platform Economy, delving more concretely into Amazon’s platforms. Her current teaching and research foci center around workers, working conditions, different forms of labor organization and the intersectional dimensions of the labor movement.
Maximilian Schäfer
Algorithms in the Wild: Evidence from an Online Marketplace
(joint work with Vito Stefano Bramante, Emilio Calvano, Giacomo Calzolari)
Abstract: Can off-the-shelf repricing algorithms used in online marketplaces learn collusive strategies that harm consumers? To shed light on the sophistication of commercial repricing technology, we deploy our own repricing software on an online platform. We implement a EXP3 repricing algorithm and compare its performance against the artificial intelligence algorithm of a selected commercial repricer. We start by establishing a performance benchmark for myopic pricing strategies when faced with a mechanical repricing rule that undercuts rivals’ prices. When competing against the mechanical rule, our EXP3 algorithm achieves a better performance than the commercial software. Additionally, our EXP3 algorithms out-competes the commercial repricing software in a direct competition. These results cast doubt on the sophistication of the selected commercial repricing software. Designing algorithms that allow for intertemporal trade-offs is a prerequisite for collusion to arise. In simulations, we show that forward-looking strategies can be learned at low costs. This provides the basis for a more in-depth investigation of forward-looking algorithms, and, hence, collusion in future iterations of this work.
Link to paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tgdmFrBTkjthiuby3uZMOF_bkcHbDq8P/view?usp=sharing
Maximilian Schäfer is a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University and the University of Bologna in Italy. His research is primarily empirical and deals with topics related to the digital economy, such as the role of data for competition, algorithmic collusion, and the impact of the platform economy on established industries. On top of that, Max is also very interested in blockchain technologies. His future research agenda will further concentrate on topics at the intersection of economics and computer science.
Brett Frischmann
Friction-In-Design Regulation as 21st Century Time, Place and Manner Restriction
(joint work with Susan Benesch [Dangerous Speech Project; Harvard University - Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society])
Abstract: Digital networked society needs friction-in-design regulation that targets the digital architectures, supposedly smart (data-driven, algorithmic) systems, and interfaces that shape human interactions, behavior, and will (beliefs, preferences, values, intentions). The relentless push to eliminate friction for the sake of efficiency has hidden social costs that affect basic human capabilities and society. A general course-correction is needed.
Friction in the digital networked environment can come in many forms. It can be as simple as a time delay prior to publishing a social media post, a notice that provides salient information coupled with a nudge toward actual deliberation, or a query that tests comprehension about important consequences that flow from an action–for example, when clicking a virtual button manifests consent to share information with strangers. We explore many examples using a simple descriptive framework that helps analysts compare and evaluate them.
One major obstacle in the United States to almost any regulation of how private companies design digital networked technologies and govern social interactions online is the First Amendment and its rigorous protections for free speech. The First Amendment has so often been used to strike down government regulation of various forms of speech that it now has a powerful preemptive effect, which some have called First Amendment Lochnerism. We are most concerned with the foreclosure of regulatory imagination and thus consideration and exploration of new regulatory possibilities, such as friction-in-design regulation.
In this article, we clear the First Amendment brush and reveal an open and mostly underappreciated regulatory territory to explore. We argue that friction-in-design regulation should be understood as Twenty-First century time, place and manner restrictions, akin to laws that prohibit using megaphones in the middle of the night, require permits before marches, and prohibit adult theaters in residential neighborhoods. This does not mean that friction-in-design regulation would escape First Amendment scrutiny altogether, of course. But it would trigger intermediate rather than strict scrutiny, so long as the friction-in-design regulation remained content neutral. In other words, not all friction-in-design regulations would qualify as content neutral time, place, and manner restrictions. We discuss various examples.
At the same time, we advance a novel governance theory that casts time, place and manner restrictions as a useful regulatory model to bring online from the offline context and conventional First Amendment jurisprudence. Properly understood, designed and applied, time, place and manner restrictions constitute a system for balancing individual freedom to communicate with the collective (state) interest in maintaining social order and peace, both offline and online.
Link to paper: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4178647
Brett Frischmann joined Villanova as The Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, in 2017. In this new role, Professor Frischmann promotes cross-campus research, programming and collaboration; fosters high-visibility academic pursuits at the national and international levels; has the ability to teach across the University; and will position Villanova as a thought leader and innovator at the intersection of law, business and economics.
A renowned scholar in intellectual property and Internet law, Professor Frischmann came to Villanova from Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University, where he was director of the Cardozo Intellectual Property and Information Law Program (2011-2016) and a Professor of Law. He is an affiliated scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, an affiliated faculty member of the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet & Society, Politecnico di Torino. Professor Frischmann most recently served as the Microsoft Visiting Professor of Information and Technology Policy at Princeton University’s Center for Information and Technology Policy.
Professor Frischmann’s work has appeared in leading scholarly publications, including Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Journal of Institutional Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, University of Chicago Law Review, and Review of Law and Economics, among others. His latest book, co-authored with philosopher Evan Selinger, Re-Engineering Humanity (Cambridge University Press), examines techno-social engineering of humans, various ‘creep’ phenomena and modern techno-driven Taylorism. Professor Frischmann’s books on the relationships between infrastructural resources, governance, commons and spillovers include Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (Oxford University Press, 2012); Governing Knowledge Commons (Oxford University Press, 2014, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg); and Governing Medical Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2017, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg). In addition, he has written a number of online articles on the intersection of technology and humanity for Scientific American
Prior to his appointment at Cardozo Law, Professor Frischmann was on the faculty of the Loyola University Chicago, School of Law from 2002 to 2010. He also has served as a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including Columbia Law School, Cornell Law School, Duke Law School, Fordham University School of Law and Syracuse University College of Law.