The Department of Economics, Hindu College hosted Ms. Payal Malik to address the inaugural

lecture of the department’s annual fest L’economiste on 4 th February 27, 2020. Ms Payal Malik
heads the Economics Division at Competition Commission of India. Ms. Malik discussed about the
economics of competition law and its’ applications to new age platform markets. She explained how
Competition laws had their foundations in micro-economic theory and the entire concept of
competition is inter- disciplinary where one gets to explore both legalities and economic theories as
well. She discussed how lack of competition causes public intervention. Ms. Malik briefed about the
theory of economic regulation which says that market faces interest pressure from producers and
electoral pressure from consumers wherein interest pressure is more persuasive. This shows that
this economic theory is incomplete and there is need of economic regulators which can design
contracts between regulated entities. Thus, CCI assumes an important role where they understand
the technicalities, legalities and economics behind a decision in fiercely competitive market e.g. they
can look into ways how technically feasible is it to regulate call drops or what should be access rules
for a monopoly like distribution. Ms. Malik further discussed about the multi-sided markets like
payment systems, Internet Service Providers. She discussed about the role of indirect network
externalities and also about complementarity in the market. Efficiency of market depends upon the
size of the platform. Further there arises a need to answer certain questions like what will be the
role of anti-trust legislations in e-commerce. As there is a shift from traditional value markets to
multi-platform markets it becomes imperative to regulate them in a manner so that both the
producers and consumers gain benefits from it. This knowledge session was quite enriching as the
students got to learn about a relatively new concept which is going to play a very important role in
our future.