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The EU Google Decisions: Extreme Enforcement or the Tip of The Behavioral Iceberg?

By  |  January 25, 2019

The recent EU Google decisions may represent a high-water mark for the use of behavioral economics in EU antitrust to date, but what do they imply for competition policy in the future? Do such cases represent the outer extremes of how far behavioral thinking can and should be taken? Or do they represent baby steps towards the more comprehensive incorporation of behavioral economics into competition policy thinking? This article highlights the widespread influence of behavioral economics across other areas of policy and discusses a number of directions in which competition policy could potentially be transformed. Noting the existence of an extensive literature in behavioral antitrust, it focuses on a number of aspects which have been given less attention to date.