Pricing Algorithms — What Role for Regulation?

The rapid spread of pricing algorithms in e-commerce markets has raised alarms about their potential for anticompetitive abuse. Enforcers and policy-makers have been concerned for some time about the possibility of widespread algorithmic price-fixing and dominant firms’ use of algorithms to damage rivals. These harms are in theory redressable under the antitrust laws. But evidence is mounting that pricing algorithms will raise prices to consumers in ways that do not violate the antitrust laws.