La implementación de la Ley de Mercados Digitales (LMD) en Europa nos puede dar algunas lecciones regulatorias a los países que, desde este lado del Atlántico, queremos emular al viejo continente (ya hay una iniciativa en Brazil; y la Comunidad Andina y México han indicado su intención de estudiar el tema).

Read the full piece (in Spanish) here.

The European Union’s implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), whose stated goal is to bring more “fairness” and “contestability” to digital markets, could offer some important regulatory lessons to those countries around the world that have been rushing to emulate the Old Continent.

Read the full piece here.

As part of a set of “shock therapy” measures introduced to deregulate and stabilize its economy, the Argentinian government led by newly elected President Javier Milei has already adopted an emergency decree (Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia) that makes broad array of legal changes. Toward the same goal, the government in late December sent up an omnibus bill on Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines Act that, among its 600 changes, proposes to modify the current Act for the Defense of Competition (Act No. 27.442).^[1]

Read the full piece here.

In order to promote competition in digital markets,^[1] Latin American countries should not copy and paste “solutions” from other jurisdictions, but rather design their own set of policies. In short, Latin American countries—like my own, Peru—should not “put the cart before the horse” and regulate markets that are not yet mature.

Read the full piece here.

Financial technology, or so-called “fintech,” is disrupting the financial sector, and that’s a good thing. Fintech services are making finance more digital and more user-friendly. This, in turn, has led to reduced transactions costs and increased levels of competition, innovation, and financial inclusion.

Alas, the emergence of fintech has also been accompanied by a rising chorus of the usual “if it’s good, mandate it; if I don’t like it, forbid it” reasoning that has motivated so many prior waves of regulatory intervention. The resulting regulations may be well-intentioned, but they more often than not lead to unintended consequences.

Read the full piece here.

There is a line of thinking according to which, without merger-control rules, antitrust law is “incomplete.” Without such a regime, the argument goes, whenever a group of companies faces with the risk of being penalized for cartelizing, they could instead merge and thus “raise prices without any legal consequences.”

Read the full piece here.