Newsblog

The Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) has elected a new President, Executive Committee and Board. For the first time, the General Assembly has established an Honorary Board with members who have served ASCOLA in a particularly dedicated way. The decisions were taken at the General Assembly in Chicago in June 2025.

Peter Picht (University of Zurich) is the new President of ASCOLA. He takes over from Rupprecht Podszun (University of Düsseldorf) who did not stand for re-election due to new responsibilities in his faculty and in a government advisory body. The ExCo and the Assembly thanked Rupprecht in a moving way for his work in different offices of ASCOLA over the years. Thomas Cheng (Hong Kong), Magali Eben (Glasgow), Giorgio Monti (Tilburg) and Wendy Ng (Melbourne) were re-elected as Vice Presidents. Wendy takes the Finances portfolio from Peter. New on the Executive Committee is Annika Stöhr, a competition economist postdoc from Ilmenau Tech. The members of the ExCo are pictured above, starting with Peter (upper left) and then Thomas, Magali, Annika, Wendy and Giorgio (clockwise).

The following members were elected to serve on the Board of ASCOLA: Zeynep Ayata, Mor Bakhoum, Maciej Bernatt, Marco Botta, Juliana Domingues Oliveira, Josef Drexl, Michal Gal, Inge Graef, Juan David Gutierrez, Vikas Kathuria, Ioannis Lianos, Bjorn Lundqvist, Francisco Marcos, John Newman, Paul Nihoul, Jasminka Pecotic Kaufman, Rupprecht Podszun and Masako Wakui. The members of the Executive Committee are automatically members of the Board. The next conference host is usually co-opted to the Board. Since this will be Ioannis Lianos (#ASCOLA2026 in London), there is no need this time to co-opt. ExCo and Board are elected for two years.

The Honorary Board shall recognize members who hosted annual conferences or made a great contribution to ASCOLA. They are elected for a non-renewable six-years-term. The General Assembly awarded this honour to the following long-time members of the Board: Fabiana Di Porto, Valeria Falce, Harry First, Wolfgang Kerber and Danny Sokol. Furthermore, the following conference organisers are elected to the Honorary Board: David Bosco (Aix-en-Provence 2019), Sofia Pais (Porto 2022), Alexandra Mikroulea and Manos Mastromanolis (Athens 2023), Florian Bien and Björn Becker (Würzburg 2024) and Spencer Weber Waller (Chicago 2025).

The Academic Society for Competition Law, ASCOLA, has voted on new rules on disclosure and transparency and agreed upon a revised ASCOLA Transparency and Disclosure Declaration at the Chicago 2025 General Assembly. The members agreed that the 2018 version of the Declaration needed an update, clearer rules, and recommendations for a transparency culture. At ASCOLA events, these rules apply and shall safeguard that the audiences have full clarity about sources of funding or data. Members are encouraged to advocate for transparency in journals, the media, and events wherever they are active. ‘Academia can only be trusted when we are fully transparent about our sources and potential biases,’ said outgoing president Rupprecht Podszun.

In recent years, an increasing number of enforcers have voiced concerns about the independence and neutrality of academics. The new declaration was drafted by a committee chaired by professor Giorgio Monti and comprising professors Thomas Cheng, Magali Eben and Ioannis Lianos. The committee undertook a thorough review of existing rules and practices in preparation of the drafting. The new declaration and a position statement by Giorgio Monti can be found here.

Elettra Bietti is the winner of the ASCOLA Best Junior Paper Award 2025. Her paper has the title “Rawlsian Antitrust”. The jury says: “The paper Rawlsian Antitrust stands out as a work of exceptional intellectual ambition and normative sophistication. Through a bold and original philosophical reframing, the author reinterprets antitrust enforcement using the lens of Rawlsian justice, offering a vision of competition law not merely as a tool for market efficiency but as a means of advancing fairness, democracy, and political legitimacy.” Elettra is an Assistant Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. The jury was composed of professors Fabiana Di Porto, Thomas Cheng, Michal Gal and David Gerber. The photo shows Thomas Cheng and Elettra Bietti during the Award Ceremony at the ASCOLA Annual Conference in Chicago on 27 June 2025. Congratulations! You can find all winners of ASCOLA Best Junior Paper Awards here.

As one of the first legal organizations to advocate for a strict, systematic approach to the disclosure of conflicts of interest, ASCOLA has been at the forefront of this issue. Since 2018, we have had a Declaration of Ethics in place on this topic. In light of recent developments, we have drafted new disclosure rules within ASCOLA. This draft will be voted on at the 2025 General Assembly in Chicago. You can find the draft and a position paper by Giorgio Monti on our Ethics page.

The international community of antitrust scholars will come together at Chicago from 26-28 June 2025. The Loyola University hosts the 20th Annual Conference of ASCOLA, the Academic Society for Competition Law, at the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies with Professor Spencer Weber Waller as the local host. Over three days, the members of ASCOLA will discuss current research in competition matters with 68 talks and several plenary panels. Topics range from AI and competition to vertical mergers, from cartel governance to judicial oversight. “We will see the whole spectre of ideas, theories, and cases in antitrust”, says Rupprecht Podszun, the ASCOLA President, “and what is more: Speakers will come from all parts of the world. ASCOLA is the place to showcase your research in competition law and economics!” Plenary panels will inter alia deal with competition in labor markets and “antitrust and pop culture”. All information is available at https://www.luc.edu/law/academics/centersinstitutesandprograms/instituteforconsumerantitruststudies/events/ascola2025/.

We are very much looking forward to the 20th Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law, hosted by the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola University Chicago, USA, #ASCOLA2025. Professor Spencer Waller will be our host.

We had a huge number of submissions this year with more than 200 papers. All papers went through a double-blind peer review process. All scholars who have submitted a paper have been informed and we are looking forward to an exciting programme!

The conference website is now up and running – check it out here: https://www.luc.edu/law/academics/centersinstitutesandprograms/instituteforconsumerantitruststudies/events/ascola2025/

It has information on registration, accomodation, social events, travel, scholarships and so on. The website is constantly updated.

The Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) has submitted its comments to the European Commission on potential guidelines for the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR). The EU Commission had issued a call for evidence on the matter. The Foreign Subsidies Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/2560) shall ensure a “level playing field” for competition in the EU by “by establishing a harmonised framework to address distortions caused, directly or indirectly, by foreign subsidies”. It is the first time that ASCOLA has participated in such a call for stakeholder evidence or submitted such a statement to a law-making or enforcing body. Participation in the Working Group was open to all ASCOLA members. The effort was coordinated by our Vice-President Magali Eben.

The submission can be found here.

The Executive Committee and the Chicago hosts have decided to extend the deadline for submissions to 3 February 2025. We accept submissions of papers in response to our call for papers for the Annual Conference 2025 up to this date. All information can be found here: Next conference

Today, on 11 November 2024, we publish the Call for Papers for the 20th Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law, ASCOLA. The Conference will be held in Chicago, USA, at Loyola University from 26-28 June 2025. The local host is Professor Spencer Weber Waller, the Director of the Institute of Consumer Antitrust Studies. We welcome contributions in three streams. The deadline for submissions ends on 27 January 2025. All details can be found in the Call. This is a great opportunity to showcase to an international audience of academic experts your work on antitrust, competition law, competition economics and related issues!

You can find the Call for Papers here.

On 22 November 2024 at 2 pm CET (Brussels time) we invite all ASCOLA Members to join us for the second ASCOLA NOEL – the November Online Event Live!  We are pleased to announce the return of the ASCOLA NOEL event. The theme this year is “Critical Perspectives of Competition Law”. The event will be held on Zoom.  We are honoured to have three speakers to share with us their perspectives of competition law. Dina Waked of Sciences Po will give us her critical evaluation of competition law and economics. Kati Cseres of University of Amsterdam will speak about competition law and feminism. And finally, Gregory Day of University of Georgia will address the race problem in US antitrust.  (The photos show Dina, Kati and Greg from left to right). The discussant is Giorgio Monti, member of the ASCOLA Executive Committee. Join us for a critical reflection on competition policy – and for seeing the ASCOLA family from all over the world, at least virtually.  More information is available here.