Antitrust Regulation Of Vertical Merger In The Digital Economy

As a commercial means and strategy to implement vertical control,vertical merger has long been considered to be far less harmful to competition than horizontal merger.In the context of the booming digital economy in recent years,many large platforms have begun to implement a large number of vertical mergers.The characteristics of digital economy amplify the competitive efficiencies and damages of vertical merger,making it increasingly become the focus of anti-monopoly regulation in various countries,and the regulators are ready to prevent the disorderly expansion of capital.Although foreign competition authorities have issued guidelines to standardize the competition review of vertical merger,Chinese competition authority remain inaction.There are few enforcement cases in practice,and the academic discussion is also limited.In this context,this paper focuses on the vertical merger in the digital economy,and holds that China needs to construct an antitrust law regulation scheme.This paper tries to put forward the antitrust law regulation scheme,summarizes the antitrust analysis framework of vertical merger,and puts forward some suggestions to the vertical merger regulation in the digital economy.This paper is divided into four parts.The first chapter aims to put forward the problem,based on the antitrust regulation of vertical merger in the digital economy.It summarizes the connotation and basic theory of law and economics of the vertical merger in the digital economy,and the alienation of vertical merger’s competition effects due to the digital economy,points out that the vertical merger in the digital economy has the characteristics of platformization,data-intensive and dynamic,and summarizes the realistic predicament in the vertical merger review.The second chapter summarizes the extraterritorial legislation and enforcement of the vertical merger,in order to provide reference for our country’s antitrust regulation.This paper summarizes the extraterritorial regulatory trend,starting with an overview of the vertical merger review system,analysis of the guidelines and the digital economy connotation.It focuses on the antitrust regulation of vertical merger in the United States and the European Union,and summarizes the antitrust review experience in the United Kingdom,Germany,South Korea,Australia and other countries.The third chapter puts forward of antitrust analysis framework of vertical merger in the digital economy,including relevant market definition,merger review threshold,competition effect,merger remedies and rules to be innovated in the digital economy.The analysis of competition effect is the most important part of the antitrust analysis framework,which is guided by the three-step “ability-incentive-effect” analysis process,then analyzed the unilateral effects,coordinated effects and efficiency effects of vertical merger respectively.The fourth chapter comes up with some suggestions to the vertical merger regulation in the digital economy.This paper raises some influence factors of vertical merger review,including the bilateral or multilateral platform,data assets and privacy protection and innovation ability,and further put forward both macro and micro advocacies to the antitrust regulation system,from the perspectives of institutional concept and specific rules.