CADE joins Computational Antitrust project hosted by Stanford University’s CodeX Center

The Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) constantly participates in international forums and initiatives intending to exchange experiences and give greater effectiveness to its endeavours. One of these actions is the Computational Antitrust project, led by the CodeX Center at Stanford University.

The project's objective is to explore how legal informatics could foster the mechanization of antitrust analyses and procedures. It started in 2021 with the plan to organize workshops and invite academics to publish articles at the intersection between antitrust and computational techniques. The first volume of publications is already available on the website.

The fast-driven digital developments force competition agencies to improve their knowledge and skills in the field of Computational Antitrust in order provide efficient enforcement. On the one hand, computational antitrust can provide companies with the tools to assess and ensure compliance with antitrust laws–before implementing new practices. It can also help them automate their interactions with antitrust agencies, starting with merger control. On the other hand, agencies can use computational tools to improve their assessment of (anti-competitive) practices or mergers, benefit from more accurate data, and simplify their processes. CADE, therefore, greatly supports the initiative.

For the President of CADE, Alexandre Cordeiro, the initiative meets one of the institutional values of the authority: innovation. “CADE is a pioneer in innovation. Recently, we have been working on information technology enterprises, such as our Project Cerebro, which improve our ability to protect competition. Dialogue and cooperation with academic and research institutions are essential in this context”, said Mr Cordeiro.

First Computational Antitrust Conference: Exploring Antitrust 3.0

On 15 December 2021, Felipe Leitão Valadares Roquete, Coordinator-General of the Antitrust Analysis Unit 9, participated in the project’s first conference, Computational Antitrust: Exploring Antitrust 3.0.

Mr. Roquete took part in the panel Competition Agencies: A Space for Discussion alongside Yann Guthmann (Head of the Digital Economy Unit of the Autorité de la Concurrence/France), Stefan Hunt (Chief Data and Technology Insights Officer of the Competition and Markets Authority/UK) and Thibault Schrepel (Associate Professor of Law at VU Amsterdam and Faculty Affiliate at Stanford University’s CodeX Center). The panel discussed antitrust authorities’ use of computational tools for analysis and investigation activities.

Learn more about the Computational Antitrust project at the project’s website.