LCII Brown Bag Seminar series

The LCII cordially invites you to its brown bag seminar on “AI Algorithms, Price Discrimination & Collusion: A Technological, Economic & Legal Perspective” presented by Ashwin Ittoo (ULiege) on Friday, February 15th.

Location & time: LCII room, B33 (last floor on the left), 12.30PM-1.30PM.

Abstract:

The rise of algorithms and big data in the digital economy has rejuvenated interest in stability and sustainability of collusion. The dominant theme is that artificial intelligence (AI) and big data facilitate both collusion by the algorithms (Ezrachi and Stucke, 2016) and extend the possibility to price discriminate even further, eventually leading to personalized pricing (Ezrachi and Stucke, 2016; Belleflamme et al., 2018). In both cases, the market equilibrium is one of supra competitive prices and profits. Our aim in this paper is to demonstrate that the concepts of personalized pricing and of algorithmic collusion are diametrically opposed. We will also discuss the prerequisites for these practices to emerge in digital competition. We adopt a qualitative approach which analyzes the personalized pricing vs. algorithmic collusion dichotomy from multiple perspectives, spanning three disciplines: technical (AI), economic and legal.