We were delighted to host our first Public Lecture in 2025, and the 4th lecture of this academic year, by welcoming Amelia Fletcher CBE, Professor of Competition Policy at Norwich Business School and Deputy Director at the Centre for Competition Policy.
Amelia presented her paper titled “Implications of behavioural economics for the pro-competitive regulation of digital platforms” which she co-authored with Zita Vasas (Compass Lexecon), and which has just come out in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.
This Lecture took place on Friday, 7 February 2025, 2.00pm – 3.30pm UK time, in-person-only, in the Hothouse, Room 282, Adam Smith Building. Following the lecture, and the Q&A with the audience, discussions will continued at the drinks reception in the foyer.
To register and secure your place in the audience, please visit our Bookitbee pages, here.
Abstract
In recent years, the relevance of behavioural economics to competition policy has become ever more apparent, especially in digital markets. Choice architecture, which shapes how consumers make decisions, has been at the centre of numerous recent legal cases brought under competition law, as well as the development of regulations at promoting competition in markets currently dominated by major tech platforms. This article focuses on the impact of behavioural insights for the design and implementation of one such regulation, the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). It underscores the relevance of choice architecture to several DMA provisions and emphasises the necessity of testing different designs ¬– through online experiments, field trials, and surveys – to ensure compliance. Despite their seemingly minor effects today, such improvements to choice architecture could prove pivotal in fostering competitive markets.
Amelia Fletcher CBE is a Professor of Competition Policy at NBS and Deputy Director at the Centre for Competition Policy. She is also a Research Fellow at the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) and an editor of the Journal of Competition Law and Economics. She was recently a member of the HM Treasury-commissioned Digital Competition Expert Panel, which reported in March 2019 and recommended the pro-competition digital regulation which was enacted in the UK as the 2024 Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.
She has been a Non-Executive Director of the Competition and Markets Authority (2016-23), Financial Conduct Authority (2013-20) and Payment Systems Regulator (2014-20), a member of the Enforcement Decision Panel at Ofgem (2014)-20122) and Chief Economist at the Office of Fair Trading (2001-2013). While that OFT, she also spent time leading its Mergers and Competition Policy teams. Prior to that, she was an economic consultant at Frontier Economics (1999-2001) and London Economics (1993-1999).
Her academic work focuses on competition policy, consumer policy and sector regulation, with a particular focus on behavioural economics and digital markets. Amelia has a DPhil and MPhil in economics from Nuffield College, Oxford.
She has been on the Councils of the Royal Economic Society, the Association of Competition Economics and on the advisory panel for the ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution (ELSE) and the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP). She has also been a member of DGComp’s Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy. She was appointed OBE in 2014 and CBE in 2020.
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