ALTI Amsterdam

[event] The Future of Competition Law Research
2025-11-28 13:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Paris) | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Co-organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Description: The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is delighted to co-organize, together with ICLE, a special event dedicated to the Master Thesis Competition in Competition Law. This gathering will showcase the outstanding work of the winners and bring together distinguished members of the jury alongside leading academics in the field. It will be a unique opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research, exchange ideas, and celebrate the next generation of competition law scholars. We warmly invite all interested participants to join us on the VU campus for what promises to be an inspiring and thought-provoking afternoon.
Speakers:

Alison Jones (King’s College London)
Mariateresa Maggiolino (Bocconi University)
Francisco Marcos (IE Law School)
Frédéric Marty (Université Côte d’Azur)
Henri Piffaut (European Commission, DG COMP)
Thibault Schrepel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Anna Tzanaki (University of Leeds)

Program:
1:00 – 1:15 PM — Welcome & Opening Remarks
Dr. Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor of Law (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
1:15 – 2:00 PM — Award Ceremony
Presentation of the three competition law thesis awards:

Grand Prize – Best Thesis
Most Innovative Thesis
Best Law & Economics Analysis

Each awardee will present their research (10 minutes each).
2:00 – 2:30 PM — Coffee Break
2:30 – 4:00 PM — Perspectives on Competition Law Research
This session focuses on the current state of research in competition law, drawing on the speakers’ own experiences through a series of 10-minute presentations followed by discussion.
Themes will include:

How researchers find their voice and build a distinctive research agenda in competition law
How to balance doctrinal, empirical, and theoretical approaches
The role of quantitative methods in modern competition research
Lessons from supervising master’s or PhD students
How practice and case law can inform theory
The papers that most shaped speakers’ understanding of competition law
What economics can (and cannot) contribute to the field
The importance of academic research for antitrust agencies
The most influential non-competition law works in our field
How mentorship shapes a research trajectory
The role of failure and resilience in academic careers
Why, and when, to publish interdisciplinary competition research

4:00 – 5:00 PM — Panel Discussion: The Future of Competition Law Scholarship
This session focuses on the future of competition law research. It will explore how technology and new institutions will shape the field in the years ahead. The panel will be boderated by Thibault Schrepel.
Themes will include:

Should competition law scholars learn to code?
The role of open data and transparency in tomorrow’s research
How GenAI may transform competition law scholarship
The evolution of academic publishing in the AI era
What role will academic research play in shaping the future of competition law?
The future of interdisciplinary collaboration between law, economics, and data science
The role of human judgment in an increasingly automated research environment
What skills and methods will define the next generation of competition law scholars

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[event] Frederic Jenny: The Five Crises of Competition Law
2025-12-10 12:00 - 13:00 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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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[event] Competition and the Wealth of Nations
2026-03-13 09:00 - 17:00 | Rome, Italy
Substance Over Slogans:
Competition and the Wealth of Nations
Please join us for a unique antitrust conference, “Substance Over Slogans: Competition and the Wealth of Nations” on March 13, 2026, at the Palazzo Ripetta in Rome, Italy.
Our aim for this conference is to look past the headlines and oft-politicized arguments that have defined the last several years of competition-policy discourse to examine the current academic foundations of antitrust through a rigorous assessment of the legal and economic state of play—this year with a deliberately multidisciplinary lens that pairs subject-matter experts from adjacent fields with antitrust scholars and practitioners.
The competition-policy landscape is shifting rapidly, and making sense of it now requires a genuinely multidisciplinary vantage point. This year’s conference aims to assemble subject-matter experts from fields as diverse as the AI, cloud, and chips stack; management and productivity; geopolitics and digital sovereignty; venture capital and bankruptcy. By pairing these voices with leading antitrust scholars, we aim to translate external evidence into concrete implications for enforcement, remedies, and process—clarifying, for example, when vertical integration in the AI stack is pro-competitive, how reallocation conditions shape contestability, where industrial policy complements rivalry, and which institutional guardrails best sustain competitive markets over time.
Against this backdrop, our Rome conference will bring together an unparalleled assembly of top academics, influential policymakers, and business experts to discuss the state of the art of economic and legal research and to translate external expertise into concrete implications for enforcement, remedies, and institutional design. Each session features a concise 10–15 minute briefing by a subject-matter expert, followed by a moderated conversation with antitrust discussants.
Our goal is to investigate the current state of antitrust policy, focusing on substance over slogans.
Hosted by:

The International Center for Law & Economics (Geoffrey A. Manne and Dirk Auer)
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute (Thibault Schrepel)
IE Law School Madrid (Francisco Marcos and Lazar Radic)

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
Dirk Auer (Director of Competition Policy, International Center for Law &Economics & Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Liège)
Gustavo Augusto Freitas de Lima (President, Brazilian Administrative Counsel for Economic Defense (CADE) & Former Assistant Deputy Director of Economic Policy, General Secretariat of the Presidency of Brazil)
David Bosco (Professor, Aix-Marseille University Faculty of Law and Political Science & Director, Center for Economic Law, Aix-Marseille University)
Harry G. Broadman (Principal, WestExec Advisors & Senior Economist, RAND)
Giuseppe Colangelo (Jean Monnet Chair in European Innovation Policy, University of Basilicata & Senior Scholar of Competition Policy, International Center for Law & Economics)
Juliana Oliveira Domingues (Professor of Economic Law and Antitrust, University of São Paulo & Former Attorney General, Brazilian Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE))
Hon. Douglas H. Ginsburg (Senior Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia & Professor of Law, George Mason University Law School)
Nicola Giocoli (Full Professor of Economics, University of Pisa Faculty of Law)
Andrei Hagiu (Professor of Information Systems, Boston University Questrom School of Business)
M. Todd Henderson (Michael J. Marks Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School)
Herbert Hovenkamp (James G. Dinan University Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School)
Frédéric Jenny (Emeritus Professor of Economics, ESSEC Business School & Former Vice President, French Competition Authority)
Thomas A. Lambert (Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance, University of Missouri School of Law)
Maria Maciá (Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School)
Mariateresa Maggiolino (Full Professor of Economic Law, Università Bocconi)
Geoffrey A. Manne (President & Founder, International Center for Law & Economics & Visiting Professor of Law, IE University)
Francisco Marcos (Professor of Law, IE University Law School)
A. Douglas Melamed (Visiting Fellow, Stanford Law School & Scholar in Residence, USC Gould School of Law)
Eduardo Pérez Motta (Founding Partner, Pérez Motta Estrada & Former President, Mexican Federal Competition Commission)
Randal C. Picker (James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School)
Lazar Radic (Assistant Professor of Law, IE University Law School & Senior Scholar of Competition Policy, International Center for Law & Economics)
Pierre Régibeau (Competition Expert, Analysis Group & Former Chief Economist, EU Commission Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP))
Thibault Schrepel (Associate Professor of Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Faculty Affiliate, Stanford University CodeX Center)
Eric Seufert (General Partner, Heracles Capital & Analyst and Podcast Host, Mobile Dev Memo)
Lauren Wagner (Fellow, Abundance Institute)
Koren W. Wong-Ervin (Partner, Jones Day & Former Counsel for Intellectual Property & International Antitrust, U.S. Federal Trade Commission)
Elena Yndurain (Professor, IE Business School & Director, AI Project Management, Microsoft)
REGISTRATION:
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[event] Jonathan Barnett: When Antitrust Gets It Wrong
2026-04-13 12:00 - 13:00 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Speaker: Jonathan Barnett is director of the law school’s Media, Entertainment and Technology Law Program and the author of The Big Steal: Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property (Oxford University Press 2024) and Innovators, Firms, and Markets: The Organizational Logic of Intellectual Property (Oxford University Press 2021).. Barnett specializes in antitrust, intellectual property, and corporate and business law, with a focus on innovation policy and strategy in technology markets. Barnett has published in the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Yale Law Journal, Journal of Legal Studies, Jurimetrics, Review of Law & Economics, and other scholarly journals. He also regularly comments in the press and at conferences on legal and policy issues concerning antitrust and intellectual property. He joined USC in 2006 and was a visiting professor at NYU School of Law in 2010. He is also an academic affiliate of the International Center for Law & Economics. Prior to academia, Barnett practiced corporate law as a senior associate at Cleary Gottlieb LLP in New York, specializing in private equity and mergers and acquisitions transactions. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Barnett received a MPhil from Cambridge University and a JD from Yale Law School.
Description: Patent holdup. Killer acquisitions. Kill zones. Default bias. Four influential theories of harm, and four cases where weak evidence drove major policy interventions. This talk offers a critical assessment of the new competition orthodoxy.
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Format: Jonathan Barnett 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] Marco Almada: The Hidden Costs of Technology-Neutral Regulation
2026-04-15 12:00 - 13:00 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Speaker: Marco Almada is a researcher working on matters of law and technology. He currently works as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Cyber Policy at the University of Luxembourg, focusing on AI regulation and cybersecurity. His research is directed towards theoretical and doctrinal issues in regulation, with a special focus on the learning mechanisms used for navigating scenarios of deep socio-technical uncertainty. He has written extensively on the regulatory frameworks being designed for AI technologies and on the governance of AI in the public sector.
Description: Technology neutrality appears in instruments ranging from WTO trade rules to EU legislation on AI and platform governance, yet scholars and policymakers consistently struggle to define what it requires in practice. Marco Almada’s paper proposes a unifying framework: technology-neutral regulation is a delegation of power, specifically the power to determine how general rules apply to particular technologies. That reframing connects otherwise disparate accounts in the literature and explains why technology-neutral approaches often fall short or produce unintended side effects. Applied to EU digital regulation, the framework shows how abstraction from technical detail concentrates power in the hands of certain public and private actors while weakening existing accountability mechanisms.
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Format: Marco Almada 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] Pablo Ibáñez Colomo: Green Technologies & Competition Law
2026-04-30 12:00 - 13:00 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Speaker: Pablo Ibáñez Colomo is Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also an Ordinary Member at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and one of the Joint General Editors of the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice (Oxford University Press). He received a PhD from the European University Institute in June 2010 (Jacques Lassier Prize). Before joining the EUI as a Researcher in 2007, he taught for three years at the Law Department of the College of Europe (Bruges), where he also completed an LLM in 2004. He has been a Visiting Professor at several institutions around the world, including Aix-Marseille University, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Kobe University and Torcuato di Tella University.
Description: Green technologies pose a major threat to incumbents in many industries, from energy to transport and food. It is therefore rational for the latter to display anticompetitive strategies aimed at delaying technological change. It would be logical for competition authorities around the world to focus on these strategies.
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Format: Pablo Ibáñez Colomo will give a 30-minute talk, followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Thibault Schrepel and a Q&A with the audience.
Chargement…

[event] Catalina Goanta: Miniconsumers
2026-06-02 12:00 - 13:00 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Speaker: Catalina Goanta is Associate Professor in Private Law and Technology and Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant HUMANads, focused on understanding the impact of content monetization on social media and on reinterpreting private law fairness in the context of platform governance. Between 2016–2021 she was Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Maastricht University, and during February 2018–February 2019, she was a Niels Stensen fellow and visited the University of St. Gallen (The Institute of Work and Employment) and Harvard University (The Berkman Center for Internet and Society).
Description: “The kids aren’t alright.” In the EU and beyond, policy attention has recently turned to children’s online activities. Many countries, from Australia to Brazil, are doubling down on platform regulation and social media bans, adopting new data protection and children’s rights frameworks to oversee these activities and protect minors from harms ranging from grooming to problematic or addictive use.
Yet this narrative is missing an important component: children are also consumers, and their online presence is based on transactions and contracts they may or may not have the legal capacity to enter into. This presentation explores the research gap surrounding children’s legal capacity: what minors are and are not permitted to engage with contractually in digital environments, and whether current legal standards should evolve in light of emerging scientific evidence.
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Format: Catalina Goanta 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] Pēteris Zilgalvis: AI at the CJUE
2026-06-16 12:00 - 13:00 | VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Speaker: Pēteris Zilgalvis entered office as Judge of the General Court of the European Union in 2021. Before joining the General Court, Mr Zilgalvis served as Head of Unit for Digital Innovation and Blockchain at the European Commission and also held several positions at the European Commission, Council of Europe, and in the Latvian administration.
Description: This seminar is an exceptional opportunity to engage directly with Judge Pēteris Zilgalvis (EU General Court) on the recently adopted CJEU Artificial Intelligence Ethics Charter. At a time when courts are increasingly confronted with the promises and perils of AI, the Charter signals an ambitious attempt to reconcile technological efficiency with the foundational principles of adjudication, i.e., human oversight, independence, and fundamental rights. The talk will shed light on how the CJEU is operationalising these principles in practice, and on the broader implications for the future of judicial decision-making in an AI-driven environment.
Organizer: Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ALTI).
Format: Judge Zilgalvis 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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