The Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) held its 17th annual conference from June 30 to July 2, 2022 at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto. Professor Sofia Pais and her team provided a wonderful organization of the conference. Out of more than 150 submissions, about 100 papers picked through double blind peer review were presented by antitrust scholars from all around the world. 29 panels were devoted to a variety of competition topics with focus on competition and innovation in digital markets. Professor Diane Wood (Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit) outlined current challenges and ways forward in her keynote speech entitled “Divergent Paths for Global Competition Law: Top Down or Bottom Up?".
The team from Ilmenau University's Chair for Economic Theory participated with two presentations in this high-profile conference. In the panel on Computational Antitrust, Oliver Budzinski and Victoriia Noskova presented and discussed their research paper “Prospects and Limits of Merger Simulations as a Computational Antitrust Tool”. In the section on remedies, Oliver Budzinski presented his ongoing research project in cooperation with Andreas Polk (Berlin School of Economics) with the title "Tearing Them Apart – Does Divestiture Increase Competition in Digital Markets?" In addition, Oliver Budzinski chaired the “Competition and Broader Challenges” panel.
Further details on program of ASCOLA 2022: https://fd.porto.ucp.pt/pt-pt/ascola-2022
Exciting overview about conference (and multiple other topics) could be found in D'Kart antitrust blog: https://www.d-kart.de/blog/2022/07/04/conference-debriefing-31-ascola2022/