Ecosystems: Experts present concept to analyse and regulate digital ecosystems

This week, within the framework of the UNCTAD Working Group on Cross-Border Cartels, BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre presented a new concept of environmental competition law – “ecoantitrust”.

The approach to the analysis and regulation of digital ecosystems, which the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre proposes to develop, is based on the use of analogies between natural and digital ecosystems and the search for regulatory solutions based on an ecological approach to competition.

Digital ecosystems

The centre is developing new mathematical models of digital competition in cooperation with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (Austria).

Together with IIASA, the Centre adapted the Lotka-Volterra model of interspecies competition. It refers to a situation where two or more competitors are competing for the same resource and with digital ecosystems, this resource is the time and attention of users.

An animal of one species is killing or devouring an animal of another species as a potential competitor, and one digital platform is absorbing another to maintain its dominant position in the market, as, for example, Facebook absorbed WhatsApp.

“The regulatory approaches of the industrial era have stepped into a new economic and social phenomenon – ecosystems. It’s time to talk about what the new unified view of antitrust regulation will be.

“The new methodology of antitrust regulation should be inspired by the same principles and views as the business strategies of modern digital giants, that is, the principles of wildlife,” explains Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre.

He cites loops as an example. “Ecosystems live in cycles. It is important for a business to understand where it is in the cycle in order to take the right steps: this is a fundamental characteristic that determines business strategy.

“However, under these conditions, the antimonopoly regulator continues to work as a mechanism, as an industrial apparatus, ignoring the cycles and the living nature of businesses.

“A transition to a more holistic model of antimonopoly regulation of ecosystems is required, taking into account their complexity, the multitude of internal connections within ecosystems and their dynamic nature”.

Digital platforms and the digital ecosystems built on their basis – networks of suppliers and consumers, formed around a single centre – have already taken centre stage in the digital economy.

They act as a “one window” through which consumers have access to the widest choice of goods and services from a wide variety of industries, and suppliers, McKinsey estimates that up to $ 60 trillion, or 30% of global revenue, will flow through ecosystems in 2025.