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Digital Competition Conference 2026

At the Digital Competition Conference 2026, cutting-edge research will meet policy on the most pressing digital market competition issues of our time.

In-person and Livestreamed

Georgetown University – Capitol Campus

Register here

Co-Sponsors

Yale Tobin Center’s Digital Economy Project, Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP)

The Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI), the Yale Tobin Center’s Digital Economy Project, and Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) are pleased to co-host the Digital Competition Conference 2026 (DCC) in Washington, D.C. The DCC is an annual gathering where researchers, policymakers, businesses, litigators, and civil society experts explore the latest lessons, challenges, and opportunities in regulating and enforcing competition in digital markets.

The DCC is in-person in Washington, D.C., with a livestream option for those who wish to join remotely. 

Please note that registration is required for in-person tickets. For the livestream, registration is not required but encouraged. Secure your ticket today.

Hardly a day passes without competition regulation or enforcement involving tech companies appearing in news headlines. With digital platforms increasingly shaping how we search, communicate, transact, and interact online, the importance of effective competition policy has never been greater. The Digital Competition Conference is where research meets policy, providing a forum for evidence-based dialogue and a shared understanding of real-world regulatory and enforcement lessons, challenges, and opportunities for competition in digital markets.

From groundbreaking research to emerging enforcement actions, the 2026 program will address pressing issues in digital markets. Sessions will feature a mix of researchers, policy experts, and practitioners.

DCC 2026 Agenda (Preliminary)

February 5, 2026
8:15-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-9:15 Welcome
9:15-10:00 Keynote: Prof. Julian Wright, National University of Singapore
10:00-11:15 Content, AI, and Antitrust

  • Madhavi Singh, Yale Law School
  • Martin D’Halluin, NewsCorp
  • Courtney Radsch, Open Markets Institute
  • Alexander Feder Cooper, Yale University

Moderator: Alissa Cooper, Knight-Georgetown Institute
11:15-11:40 Break
11:40-12:45 International Regulatory Developments

  • Gunn Jiravuttipong, UC Berkeley Law
  • Camila Pires Alves, Brazil Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE)
  • Vikas Kathuria, BML Munjal University
  • Sangyun Lee, Kyoto University

Moderator: Filippo Lancieri, Georgetown Law

Related Paper:

  • The Global Race to Rein in Big Tech (Gunn Jiravuttipong) | Paper
12:45-2:05 Lunch

Panel: Institutional Design (1:00-1:50)

  • Felix Styma, iconomy & Innovate Europe Foundation
  • Alexandre de Streel, U. of Namur & CERRE
  • Jérémie Jourdan, Geradin Partners

Moderator: David Hyman, Georgetown Law

Related Papers:

  • The Anatomy of the DMA Process: An Example of Responsive Regulation (Richard Feasey, Giorgio Monti and Alexandre de Streel) | Paper
  • Remedies for Self-Preferencing: Dominance And Its Discontents (David A. Hyman, Mohammad Rahmati & David J. Franklyn) | Paper
2:05-3:45 Privacy, Security, and Competition

  • “Security vs. Interoperability” Arguments: A Technical Framework (Daji Landis, New York University) | Paper
  • Anonymizing search click-and-query data while maintaining utility (Joe Jerome, DuckDuckGo) 
  • Competition and Privacy (Yifei Wang, University of Pittsburgh School of Business) | Paper 
  • The PET Paradox: How Amazon Instrumentalises PETs in Sidewalk to Entrench Its Infrastructural Power (Thijmen van Gend, TNO & Delft University of Technology) | Paper

Discussant: Joe Calandrino, Carnegie Mellon University
3:45-4:00 Break
4:00-5:30 Nuances of Market Participant Behavior

  • Contestability and the Optimal Regulation of Social Media Platforms (Miguel Risco, Bocconi University) | Paper
  • App Store Competition (Gaston Llanes, Catholic University of Chile) | Paper
  • Sherlocking: The Effect of Platform-owner Entry on the Competitive Behavior of Third-party Firms (Ben Leyden, Cornell University)
    | Paper
  • Exclusionary effects of incentive schemes: platform rewards and multi-homing in ride hailing (Sean Ennis, University of East Anglia)
    | Paper

Discussant: Mike Walker, Durham University Business School and Frontier Economics
5:30-7:00 Poster Session

Posters Being Presented:

  • Algorithmic Tacit Collusion: Addressing the Gaps in Article 101(1)(a) of the TFEU (Emma Minerva Brambilla) | Paper
  • Defining ‘Real-Time’ A toolkit for assessing data portability under the DMA and digital competition laws (Thomas Carey-Wilson, Lisa Dusseault and Chris Riley) | Paper
  • Economic Rationales for Regulating Behavioral Ads (Pegah Moradi, Cristobal Cheyre and Alessandro Acquisti) | Paper
  • EU Big Tech Laws: An Emerging Public Utilities Regulation (Alexandre de Streel) | Paper
  • Future proofing the DMA for Agentic AI – Lessons from the AI Act (Jan-Frederick Göhsl) | Paper
  • The Self-Preferencing Prohibition as a Fairness Provision (Andreas Haupt) | Paper
  • The Transition from “Free” to Subscription Models in Big Tech (Olga Kokoulina) | Paper
February 6, 2026
8:15-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-9:45 Debate: Ecosystem Theories in Digital Markets

  • Fiona Scott Morton, Yale University
  • Ioannis Lianos, University College London (UCL)

Related Paper:

  • Towards a Legal Theory of Digital Ecosystems (Ioannis Lianos, Klaas Hendrik Eller and Tobias Kleinschmitt) | Paper
9:45-11:00 Building on Recent Antitrust Wins

  • Doha Mekki, UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice
  • Adam Gitlin, Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia
  • Austin Ostiguy, Office of the Tennessee Attorney General
  • Jason Kint, Digital Content Next

Moderator: Luther Lowe, Y Combinator
11:00-11:20 Break
11:20-12:30 Search and Ad Tech

  • Gatekeepers and Self-Preferencing: Incentives and Welfare Trade-offs in Two-sided Markets (Muxin Li, Fudan University) | Paper
  • Who benefits from Google’s SERP? The impact of the DMA on the Air Travel Market (Joan Calzada, University of Barcelona) | Paper
  • Beyond Search: How LLMs Reshape Users’ Information Seeking and Consumption Behavior Evidence from an Online Field Experiment (Cristiana Firullo, Cornell University)

Discussant: Chiara Farronato, Harvard University
12:30-1:45 Lunch

Lightning talks from poster presenters
1:45-2:35 Innovation, AI, and Antitrust

  • Innovation Ecosystems in Antitrust (Ketan Ahuja, Harvard Kennedy School) | Paper
  • What if disruption really happens – are competition law and digital regulation fit for a new era of AI-driven competition? (Jan-Frederick Goehsl, University of Muenster) | Paper

Discussant: Chris Riley, Data Transfer Initiative
2:35-3:45 Interactive Session: AI Antitrust Theory of Harm

Led by Jonathan Kanter, Carnegie Mellon & Washington University St. Louis
3:45-4:00 Close
Additional Papers Accepted for DCC Publication
  • How to Regulate the Cloud: A Blueprint to Address the Market Failures and National Security Risks of Cloud Computing (Asad Ramzanali) | Paper
  • Innovation or Infringement? Generative AI and the Potential for Exclusionary Abuse under Article 102 TFEU (Todd Davies) | Paper
  • Mergers and Cooptive Acquisitions (Alexandros Kazimirov) | Paper
  • Reverse Acquihires in AI (Justine Haekens) | Paper
  • The AI Infrastructure Revenue Gap: Implications for Market Structure and Competition (Mihir Kshirsagar and Felix Chen) | Paper
  • The Automated but Risky Game: Modeling and Benchmarking Agent-to-Agent Negotiations and Transactions in Consumer Markets (Shenzhe Zhu, Jiao Sun, Yi Nian, Tobin South, Alex Pentland and Jiaxin Pei) | Paper
  • The Iterative Nature of Digital Regulation: Stakeholder-driven enforcement in the DMA and DMCCA (Jasper van den Boom, Sarah Hinck, Rupprecht Podszun and Oles Andriychuk) | Paper
  • The Platform-Property Paradox (Nikolas Guggenberger) | Paper

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