Chillin'Competition

For some reason, I found myself presenting at many more conferences than I thought I would during June. Oh, well. Perhaps some fresh air was not a bad idea after a few months typing. I had a particularly intense week that started in Bruges, continued in London and finished in Oxford. Before it is too late (if it is not already), I thought I would share some materials (including the pics!).

Wednesday 21 June: In Bruges, I had the pleasure of presenting at the symposium organised by the students of the Law & Economics specialism (ELEA in Bruges jargon). Other speakers included Mike Walker (CMA), Luca Prete (Chambers of AG Wahl), Alex de Streel (Namur and CERRE) and Miguel Rato (Quinn Emanuel).

My presentation was on product design. You can find it here. We had great fun, and the event was a good reminder of how lucky I am to teach in Bruges: we went beyond the allocated time and the students wanted to go on with the discussion. At some point, I was clearly the one who wanted a break and a glass of white (and it does not happen often)!

Friday 23 June: Friday took me to King’s College London. As every year for the past three, I acted as a judge in the Herbert Smith Freehills Competition Law Moot. Congratulations to Hong Kong University (and its coach, the great Thomas Cheng), for their second victory in a row! And thanks to Baskaran Balasingham (you will find him above, next to Alison Jones) for sending the picture.

Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 June: And finally, Oxford, where I shared, in the context of the legendary antitrust symposium, some thoughts on the analysis of the counterfactual in EU competition law. The atmosphere of this symposium is truly unique, and the setting (Pembroke College) does not do any harm. The Oxford competition law people (Ariel, Julian, Maria) are, I guess, very proud of their creature.

Here is the presentation I gave. The paper based on the talk will be coming out in the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement. At Oxford, my problem was the opposite than the one I had in Bruges: I wish I had had much more time to go in detail over Maria’s and Ioannis’s excellent comments!

As you know, the marathon continued, in Brussels, the following week, in the form of our ‘workshop’ (in Alfonso’s jargon) on judicial review. More on this tomorrow!