The Meaning of Competition: Assertive Antitrust Enforcement and the Digital Economy

In May 1946, Friedrich A. Hayek delivered the seminal Stafford Little Lecture at Princeton University, where his influential ideas of competition as a rivalrous process by which information is discovered were laid down.

Celebrating the 75th anniversary of “The Meaning of Competition,” this conference on November 4, 2021 reinvigorated Hayek’s legacy in these times of aggressive antitrust enforcement in the digital economy.

Jointly organized by ITIF’s Schumpeter Project on Competition Policy and the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), this conference, held at the IEA’s offices at Lord North Street in the heart of Westminster, featured world-leading experts, officials, and scholars, who debated current concepts and misconceptions of the meaning of competition in the digital era.

Recognized as the most influential think tank in the United Kingdom, the IEA’s history is closely associated with Hayak’s ideas. Ranked as the world’s most authoritative think tank for science and technology, ITIF recently launched The Schumpeter Project on Competition Policy to rethink the way we approach competition issues in a rapidly changing market environment.