Complexity-Minded Antitrust: Taking Theories Seriously

Abstract

An increasing number of research, especially in law, are pointing out the difficulties of the neoclassical paradigm in studying the economy of digital platforms. Some of them propose to shift from the neoclassical paradigm to a complexity paradigm, especially to deal with antitrust issues. Although this shift opens new opportunities to understand the dynamics of digital platforms and markets driven by networks effects, it seems that most researchers in this field are using indifferently different definitions of complexity, and especially Hayek’s approach and those popularized by the Santa Fe Institute. The aim of this paper is to clarify the differences between these two definitions and show that they are not compatible, cannot use similar methods and reach radically different conclusions as far as competition law and antitrust are concerned.

Keywords: Complexity, Antitrust, Agent-Based Modeling, Computational Simulations, Friedrich Hayek, Brian Arthur

JEL Classification: B41, B53, K21, L12