The Effective Use of Economics in the EU Digital Markets Act

Economic thinking and analysis lie at the heart of the objectives and the design of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). However, the design of the DMA reflects a very deliberate—and reasonable—intention to ensure clarity, speed, administrability, and enforceability. In doing so, this pro-competitive regulation omits several elements of standard competition law where economics has typically played a key role. Nonetheless, we believe that economic insights and analysis—including behavioural economic thinking—will continue to play an important role in enabling the DMA to achieve its ambitious and laudable goals, albeit in a somewhat different way.