How to address under-enforcement in digital markets?

We find that a reasonable reading of the available evidence indicates that there has been significant under-enforcement of merger control with respect to the digital platforms. We argue that this under-enforcement means that we should change the standard against which we assess whether such mergers are anti-competitive. We outline several possible ways in which the standard could be changed and highlight the importance of improving competition authorities’ treatment of uncertainty. Finally, we discuss the type of analysis that competition authorities should carry out in order to give themselves the best chance of getting merger control decisions right in the digital arena. We highlight the importance of asking the right questions about dynamic competition, rather than focusing on traditional static competition approaches.