By Alexandre Barreto, Patrícia A. Morita Sakowski & Christine Park
The BRICS Competition Authorities Working Group on Digital Economy recently published its first Report under the leadership of Brazil’s CADE as Chair and Russian FAS of Russia’s as Co-Chair of the Working Group. As a descriptive work, the Report provides an overview of competition policy and enforcement practices involving digital markets in Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa on selected topics, such as market power assessment, innovation and dynamic competition, acquisition of entrants by incumbents, barriers to entry, algorithmic pricing and big data. The Report also lists some of the main challenges to competition enforcement in the digital era. For CADE, the central question relies on how to intervene in highly dynamic markets. With the release of the Report, CADE hopes to stimulate the debate and is open to discuss the development of competition law and policy in the digital era.