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The Importance of Antitrust in the Digital Economy

By  |  March 30, 2020

Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, Digital Freedom Fund

Why is antitrust so important for the digital economy? Because the digital economy is ruled by data, including personal data. The latter relates to privacy.

Privacy is not necessarily in and of itself important for competition regulators, but data is. Data can act as a barrier to entry, but can also be used to foreclose competitors’ access to market and leveraging market power from one market to abuse such market power in another market.

These issues go straight to the core of antitrust. It is extremely important to understand how data is collected, how it is used and combined, and how it is it monitored. Data gives firms a competitive advantage in almost all markets.

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