Conference on impact assessment of oversight by competition and consumer authorities

On Wednesday, November 16, approximately 200 scholars, consultants, and colleagues from other authorities in different countries will descend on Amsterdam to attend the conference on ‘Impact Assessment of Interventions of Competition and Consumer Authorities’ organized by the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).

Henk Don, Member of the Board of ACM, adds:  ‘Our aim is to promote fair competition as effectively as possible, and to protect consumers. That is why we already conduct a lot of research. It is good to work together with experts from various countries to develop research methods in order to be able to measure and to improve the impact of our work.’

The two keynote speakers are Professor Tommaso Valletti and Massimo Motta. Mr. Valletti is Professor of Economics at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", and he is the Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission. Mr. Motta was the former Chief Competition Economist, and is currently Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

Making the impact of regulators’ interventions easy to measure

It is becoming more and more important to make the impact of regulators’ interventions more visible. Furthermore, what are effective instruments in order to solve problems regarding competition and consumer protection? How much benefit do the oversight efforts of competition authorities and consumer authorities produce? What lessons can be drawn from the impact assessments that have been made thus far? Are we able to learn from related fields such as sector-specific regulation and health care oversight? Conference attendees will talk about theories, models, experiences, and solutions in order to be able to calculate the impact of interventions.