Abstract
In recent years, the globalisation and digitalisation of national economies, together with the proliferation/expansion of national competition regimes, has led to a growing number of multinational firms and cross-border competition infringements, which in turn has increased the demand for international competition co-operation. Yet, while this demand has spiked, answers have been lacking, resulting in too much local enforcement in global markets - causing troubling asymmetries, flaws, conflicts, and political distortions in the nation-centric enforcement of such global markets.Against this backdrop, the thesis starts by explaining why international procedural cooperation is essential to ensure that national competition regimes achieve their common goal (i.e. safeguarding markets’ competitiveness for the good of both businesses and consumers), why past attempts to deliver greater international competition co-operation failed, and the shortcomings of the alternatives introduced as substitutes for a more advanced global competition co-operation framework.
Further, the thesis analyses the primary factors boosting the demand for international competition co-operation; explains the modalities in which such demand has been addressed so far; and illustrates present achievements and issues. Then, the thesis analyses a selection of regional competition co-operation frameworks (i.e., CAN, CARICOM, ECN, and WAEMU) with the aim to discover an imitative model for re-engendering the global co-operation framework and to identify the features that could underpin its success.
Subsequently, the thesis then moves into its ‘pars construens’, by advancing a Proof of Concept (PoC) to re-engineer the global framework for international competition cooperation. The PoC embraces cross-country differences and attempts to control them through AI and blockchain technologies, to deliver advanced procedural co-operation without departing from existing nation-centric regimes. Accordingly, the PoC proposes the institution of the so-called ‘Global Antitrust Network’ (GAN), a global-wide, blockchain-based, AI-driven, multilateral, decentralised, voluntary, and non-hierarchical platform enabling cross-border procedural competition co-operation.
In this context, the thesis explains the GAN’s political feasibility and analyses its policy case by illustrating its benefits and compatibility with the demands of human rights protection. Further, the thesis examines the potential legal instruments for realising the GAN together with their pros and cons, and details among others the GAN’s technical infrastructure, institutional design, governance and inner working mechanisms. Finally, the thesis concludes with a preliminary illustration of the GAN’s practical potential applications and how they could mitigate the persisting issues of nation-centric competition enforcement in global markets (asymmetries, gaps, overlaps, and political contaminations).
Date of Award | 1 May 2024 |
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Original language | English |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisor | Andrea Biondi (Supervisor) & Renato Nazzini (Supervisor) |