I had the pleasure of speaking about artificial intelligence and algorithmic collusion at the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law Spring Meeting 2018 last month. The star war-themed session seemed to have gone very well. I want to thank again Paul Saint-Antoine, Lesli Esposito, Professors Maurice Stucke and Joshua Gans for putting together the panel with me.

I have just posted another article on algorithmic collusion on SSRN. The paper is partially based on my remarks at the Spring Meeting but expands on several fronts. Below is the abstract. You can download the full working paper at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171315

Abstract

The past few years have seen many legal scholars and antitrust agencies expressing interest in and concerns with algorithmic collusion. In this paper, I survey and draw lessons from the literature on Artificial Intelligence and on the economics of algorithmic tacit collusion. I show that a good understanding of this literature is a crucial first step to better understand the antitrust risks of algorithmic pricing and devise antitrust policies to combat such risks.

Keywords: algorithmic pricing, algorithmic collusion, artificial intelligence, antitrust

This is one of a series of papers I have written in the past year about the general topic of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and their implications on antitrust issues.

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and comments. You can reach me at [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn [here]

Ai Deng, PhD

Principal at Bates White Economic Consulting

Lecturer at Advanced Academic Program, Johns Hopkins University

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