ALTI Amsterdam

[event] Richard S. Markovits: The Impact of Mergers on R&D
2025-06-17 12:00 (Europe/Paris) | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Speaker: Richard Markovits is the John B. Connally Chair in Law at the University of Texas. He teaches and writes in the areas of antitrust, law and economics, constitutional law and jurisprudence. He is the author of articles in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review and elsewhere as well as the book Matters of Principle: Legitimate Legal Argument and Constitutional Interpretation (NYU, 1998), Truth or Economics: On the Definition, Prediction, and Relevance of Economic Efficiency (Yale, 2008), and Economics and the Interpretation and Application of U.S. and E.U. Antitrust Law (two vols.) (Springer, 2014). He came to Texas from Stanford Law School in 1976.
Description: This talk will examine how mergers and acquisitions affect R&D investment through two mechanisms: reducing price competition (which increases investment) and altering investment competition intensity (an overlooked factor in antitrust analysis). It will then challenge the assumption that more R&D will always be economically efficient, arguing that product R&D will tend to be over-incentivized while production-process R&D will be under-incentivized due to market imperfections. Prof. Markovits will further contend that current policies combining IP protections with immediate R&D expense deductions create uncertainty about optimal investment levels because we are not able to accurately measure how individual projects affect discovery probabilities or the true breadth of IP protection across different types of innovations.
Format: Prof. Richard S. Markovits will give a 30-minute talk, followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Thibault Schrepel and a Q&A with the audience.
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[event] Geoffrey A. Manne: DMA Goes Global
2025-10-10 12:00 - 13:00
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Speaker: Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a Visiting Professor at IE University in Madrid, and a distinguished fellow at Northwestern University’s Center on Law, Business, and Economics. Manne holds AB & JD degrees from the University of Chicago. He is an expert in the economic analysis of law, focusing particularly on antitrust, consumer protection, telecom, IP, and technology regulation. From 2003 to 2006 he was an assistant professor at Lewis & Clark Law School where he taught law & economics, international economic regulation, corporations, and other courses. In 2006 he decamped from Lewis & Clark to work in Microsoft’s legal department, heading up a program on law & economics academic engagement. He subsequently founded ICLE in 2009. Prior to teaching, Manne practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard A. Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC. His writings and publications are available at SSRN and ICLE.
Description: This presentation will examine the rise of Digital Competition Regulations (DCRs) such as the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and their global counterparts. It will argue that DCRs will depart fundamentally from traditional competition law, prioritizing rent redistribution, the facilitation of rivals, and the deliberate weakening of successful platforms over consumer welfare or innovation. Drawing on cases like Apple’s DMA compliance and the Android Auto decision, the talk will highlight the conceptual ambiguities, innovation risks, and broader paradigm shift these regulations will represent for competition policy worldwide.
Format: Geoffrey A. Manne will give a 30-minute talk, followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Thibault Schrepel and a Q&A with the audience.
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[event] Frederic Jenny: The Five Crises of Competition Law
2025-12-10 12:00 - 13:00
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Speaker: Frédéric Jenny holds a Ph.D in Economics from Harvard University (1975), a Doctorate in Economics from the University of Paris (1977) and an MBA degree from ESSEC Business School (1966). He is Emeritus Professor of Economics at ESSEC Business School in Paris and President of the International Committee of Concurrences Review. He is Chairman of the OECD Global Competition Forum, and former Co-Director of the European Center for Law and Economics of ESSEC. He was previously Non-Executive Director of the Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom (2007-2014), Judge on the French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation, Economic Commercial and Financial Chamber) from 2004 to August 2012, Vice Chair of the French Competition Authority (1993-2004) and President of the WTO Working Group on Trade and Competition (1994-2003). He was visiting professor at Northwestern University Department of Economics in the United States (1978), Keio University Department of Economics in Japan (1984), University of Capetown Business School in South Africa (1991), Haifa University School of Law in Israel (2012). He was Visiting Professor at University College London Law School (2005-2010), Global Professor of Antitrust in the New York University School of Law’s Hauser Global Law School (2014, 2017 and 2022) and Senior Fellow in the Online Global Competition and Consumer Law Masters Program, University of Melbourne (Australia) (2016-2018)
Description: Industrial policy to promote growth through innovation has taken center stage in Europe’s economic policy. What do we know about the economics of innovation and the respective roles of competition and industrial policy in the promotion of innovation? Under which condition could these two policies be complementary?
Format: Frederic Jenny will give a 30-minute talk, followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Thibault Schrepel and a Q&A with the audience.
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[event] Teodora Groza: Governing Foundation Models
2026-03-05 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Teodora Groza is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen. She has obtained a PhD in law from Sciences Po Law School and has held visiting positions at Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School. Her work is underlined by the belief that technological developments need to be paired with governance innovations and investigates the fitness of various legal interventions for ensuring AI alignment. Methodologically, she leverages the toolkit of law and economics, in particular organizational and institutional economics.
She has published on data markets, the governance of AI companies, the role of regulation in promoting innovation, and the impact of new business models on the EU and US antitrust frameworks. She regularly intervenes at academic, civil society, and industry conferences.
Description: Senior executives of frontier AI labs have recently described AI foundation models as either “infrastructures” or “platforms.” Although these terms are often used interchangeably in legal and governance debates, economists distinguish between the effects and incentive structures they generate. This talk examines the role of foundation models in today’s economy and disentangles their platform-like and infrastructure-like characteristics. Building on this distinction, it situates foundation models within the existing regulatory architectures of platforms (e.g. social media, digital marketplaces) and infrastructures (e.g. public utilities). It then analyzes how different governance choices would shape access, competition, and the allocation of regulatory authority.
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Format: Teodora Groza will give a 30-minute talk, followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Thibault Schrepel and a Q&A with the audience.
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