About this Event
Our aim for this conference is to look past the headlines and oft-politicized arguments that have defined the last several years of competition-policy discourse to examine the current academic foundations of antitrust through a rigorous assessment of the legal and economic state of play—this year with a deliberately multidisciplinary lens that pairs subject-matter experts from adjacent fields with antitrust scholars and practitioners.
The competition-policy landscape is shifting rapidly, and making sense of it now requires a genuinely multidisciplinary vantage point. This year’s conference aims to assemble subject-matter experts from fields as diverse as the AI, cloud, and chips stack; management and productivity; geopolitics and digital sovereignty; venture capital and bankruptcy. By pairing these voices with leading antitrust scholars, we aim to translate external evidence into concrete implications for enforcement, remedies, and process—clarifying, for example, when vertical integration in the AI stack is pro-competitive, how reallocation conditions shape contestability, where industrial policy complements rivalry, and which institutional guardrails best sustain competitive markets over time.
Against this backdrop, our Rome conference will bring together an unparalleled assembly of top academics, influential policymakers, and business experts to discuss the state of the art of economic and legal research and to translate external expertise into concrete implications for enforcement, remedies, and institutional design. Each session features a concise 10–15 minute briefing by a subject-matter expert, followed by a moderated conversation with antitrust discussants.
Our goal is to investigate the current state of antitrust policy, focusing on substance over slogans.
Hosted by:
The International Center for Law & Economics (Geoffrey A. Manne and Dirk Auer)
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute (Thibault Schrepel)
IE Law School Madrid (Francisco Marcos and Lazar Radic)
Confirmed Speakers:
Dirk Auer (Director of Competition Policy, International Center for Law & Economics)
Herbert Hovenkamp (Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania)
Geoffrey A. Manne (President, International Center for Law & Economics)
Maria Maciá (Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School)
Francisco Marcos (Professor of Law, IE Law School)
A. Douglas Melamed (Visiting Fellow, Stanford Law School)
Lazar Radic (Assistant Professor of Law, IE Law School Madrid & Senior Scholar for Competition Policy, International Center for Law & Economics)
Thibault Schrepel (Associate Professor of Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Koren Wong-Ervin (Partner, Jones Day)
Agenda:
The agenda is currently being finalized. Please check back for updates.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Palazzo Ripetta, 231 Via di Ripetta, Roma, Holy See (Vatican City)
USD 0.00 to USD 300.00
