Value extraction and institutions in digital capitalism: Towards a law and political economy synthesis for competition law

Abstract

The rise of digital capitalism was marked by significant changes in the processes of value generation and capture in the economy. However, its impact on competition has only been recently explored. Taking a Law and Political Economy perspective we analyse four central developments challenging the traditional competition law framework and raising important questions regarding the broader institutional environment for the protection of competition: the transition towards financialisation and the logic of futurity, in particular in the digital economy, which gives rise to new competitive strategies of undertakings, structured around the 'shareholder value' principle; the extraction of economic value through new types of labour, which fall outside traditional employment relationships and hence affect the scope of competition law in the digital economy; the emergence of digital value chains that rely on multi-sided platforms and the formation of digital ecosystems, which challenge the usual focus of competition law on markets; the generation and extraction of value in the digital economy through new types of commodities and natural and artificial scarcities, that shape new social relations of production in accordance with the logic of futurity and lead to the emergence of competitive bottlenecks. Based on this analysis, we emphasize the need for a comprehensive theory-building for competition law and regulation that engages with these new processes of value generation and capture. We highlight how the underlying theories of 'value' and the institutional set-up have led to inequality and reduced competition. Existing institutions could not respond to these changes, which led to the initiation of significant institutional reforms. The prevailing conception of competition law had to evolve in congruence with different regulatory alternatives (a 'toolkit' approach). The article concludes by analysing how the emerging competition and regulatory compass for the digital economy in the European Union (EU) contributes to this dialectic between value generation/capture and institutional choice.