Fourth MaCCI Annual Conference at ZEW

On March 12 and 13, 2015, the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the University of Mannheim organised the fourth annual conference of the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI). 90 participants, among them many renowned researchers and practitioners, attended the event to discuss highly topical and practice-oriented research issues with regard to competition and innovation from both an economic and a legal perspective.

The two keynote speeches by Dr. Mike Walker (Chief Economic Adviser at the Competition and Markets Authority) and Prof. Giorgio Monti (European University Institute Florence) marked the highlights of the conference. On the first day, Dr. Walker identified a number of open questions concerning competition policy that economic researchers haven’t been able to answer so far. On the second day, Prof. Monti discussed the functionality of the numerous national competition laws and authorities in Europe and made a plea for stronger extraterritorial antitrust enforcement.

This year, the conference’s focus were the parallel 30-minute sessions, featuring 41 cutting-edge economic and jurisprudential research contributions presented by the respective authors and discussed by another researcher with a similar research focus. Particularly interesting were the sessions focusing on currently discussed topics between experts, such as exclusive agreements, minority shareholdings, vertical relationships, net neutrality, control of media concentration, and sanctions for competition law infringements. Well-known speakers of the fields industrial and competition economics like Prof. Patrick Rey (Toulouse School of Economics), Prof. Luís Cabral (New York University) or Prof. Yossi Spiegel (Tel Aviv University, ZEW Research Associate) contributed to the conference with their presentations, but also with their frequent comments, giving especially young researchers valuable ideas.

As in previous years, the conference could foster the exchange between economists and jurists, as well as science and practice. The next MaCCI Annual Conference is scheduled for March 2016. However, MaCCI will host a number of further events this year, such as the Mannheim Energy Conference on May 7 and 8.

Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI)

The Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI) is a research association of ZEW and the School of Law and Economics at the University of Mannheim. It receives funding from the State of Baden-Württemberg and the Leibniz Association. MaCCI strengthens the exchange between researchers of law and economy and, thus, gives impetus in terms of competition policy, regulation, and innovation. Core issues analysed by MaCCI include vertical competition restraints, abuse of market power, merger control, public and private enforcement of competition law, regulations in the telecommunications and energy market, and competition in the health sector. For more information visit www.macci-mannheim.eu