Proposals for International Cooperation in Digital Markets

Abstract

Some countries have called for several years for international cooperation in digital markets. Yet the declarations are political without concrete policy proposals on how to achieve cooperation. International cooperation is vital to ensure a common approach that minimizes compliance and enforcement costs at a time of an avalanche of investigations and legislation worldwide to tackle competition issues in the digital economy. The paper fills the gap with the calls by proposing three cost-effective solutions to inform decision-makers in the context of future discussions in Autumn 2022 related to enforcement and policy approaches to competition in digital markets. Section II reviews the calls for international cooperation. Section III examines the benefits and costs of international cooperation. Section IV then proposes some recommendations for international cooperation. Section V concludes.

Keywords: competition law, international cooperation, digital markets, digital competition

JEL Classification: K21, L1, L4, L5, L86