Firm Of Counsel Joshua P. Davis and associate Anupama Reddy have authored “AI and Interdependent Pricing: Combination Without Conspiracy?” which was written in August and posted today in Competition: The Journal of the Antitrust, UCL and Privacy Section.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds the potential to enhance the ability of competitors to coordinate prices without forming agreements. That could cause widespread market failures. Competitors in a broad range of industries could use AI to cause the same harms brought about by horizontal price fixing without triggering legal liability. Josh and Anu suggest a solution to this potential problem: adopting the long-contemplated policy of imposing civil liability when competitors achieve supracompetitive prices regardless of whether they enter an agreement to do so.
Josh and Anu also posted a related blog on AI and interdependent pricing on “Machine Lawyering,” organized and edited by the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Law Faculty’s Center for Financial Regulation and Economic Development. “Machine Lawyering” is designed as a public forum to bring together leading thoughts and important developments in the ensemble of processes and questions that are arising from the application of information technology to law, legal transactions, and regulation.