Gatekeepers or Guardians: Designing Platforms in the Face of Regulation
At the International Center for Law & Economics’ March 13 conference in Rome—“Substance over Slogans: Competition and the Wealth of Nations”—the fourth panel, “Gatekeepers or Guardians: Designing Platforms in the Face of Regulation,” featured Lazar Radic, Eric Seufert, Andrei Hagiu, Herbert Hovenkamp, and Thomas A. Lambert. The discussion focused on how to conceptualize platforms—as gatekeepers that require constraint or as curators that create value through governance—and how frameworks like the Digital Markets Act (DMA) shape those roles.
Panelists then examined tradeoffs in regulating practices like price parity, self-preferencing, and interoperability, along with the broader shift toward ex ante rules. The core tension was clear: bright-line regulation offers speed and certainty, but risks high error costs in complex, fast-moving markets, where intervention can just as easily distort incentives and harm consumers as promote competition.
Video of the full panel is embedded below.