HAYEK ON COMPETITION - A liberal antitrust for a digital age?

For Hayek individuals and firms in the market are largely ignorant of the circumstances surrounding the supply and demand of the goods and services they buy and sell, and the forces responsible for changing prices. [...] Here, as much as in the realm of property, the precise content of the permanent legal framework, the rules of civil law, are of the greatest importance for the way in which a competitive market will operate. [...] The most ‘effective size of the firm is ‘one of the unknowns to be discovered by the market process.’ 32 On the ‘big is bad’ thesis that lies at the heart of the current call for a more ‘aggressive antitrust,’ Hayek (1979: 77) in response to similar concerns in the 1970s had this to say: The misleading emphasis on the influence of the individual firm on prices, in combination with the popular prej. [...] But it is a partial solution as he would confine the illegality to the unreasonableness of the restrictive agreement to the parties to the agreement, ignoring the harmful effects to consumers and other third 39 parties. [...] Some reforms to competition law would have been endorsed by Hayek, such as the use of the broader concept of a ‘digital ecosystems’ in place of the present market definition approach, and the greater recognition of innovation and dynamic considerations in the assessment of competition.