Professor Beaton-Wells launches new podcast on competition in a digital age.

Join Caron Beaton-Wells, Director of the Competition Law & Economics Network, on her new podcast tackling the most pressing challenges facing competition in our economies today.  In the first series, Caron explores what it means to participate as a competitor, consumer or citizen in a digital economy and society. Featuring regular cut-through interviews with leading thinkers, movers and shakers, Competition Lore is a podcast series that engages us all in a debate about the transformative potential and risks of digitalised competition.

Competition in a digital economy is a new frontier. Technology is driving economic growth through continual innovation. It’s delivering choice, convenience and connectedness in ways previously unimaginable. At the same time, there is disruption, concentration, intrusion, displacement. A dark side?

In Competition Lore, Caron explores what competition means in a digital age, whether we’re experiencing the industrial revolution in tech form or a whole new paradigm. Through in-depth but decipherable dialogue with academics, policymakers, law enforcers and others, Caron interrogates whether, why and how we should be regulating Big Tech.

Governments are spruiking the benefits that technology provides, while becoming increasingly wary of risks and costs. In the process, some are pitting themselves against tech giants who seem way out ahead in a data-driven race for world domination. Public servants and politicians move much slower than code hackers and software developers.

Do the economic models, theories and tools developed over the last century still apply, or do we need new ones? Can competition aficionados afford to confine their attention to the economics, or does digitalised competition compel them to confront social and political concerns as well? Asking the hard questions and searching for answers, the podcast unravels Big Data, multi-sided markets, network effects, collusive algorithms and other mysteries of digital markets. It provides a platform for a civil discourse about the challenges and opportunities that data-driven business models pose for competition policy and law.

Join Caron to ensure that the “lore” in this important field does not remain the exclusive province of expert “folk”. Listen to the trailer...