Value extraction and institutions in digital capitalism: Towards a law and political economy synthesis for competition law

The rise of digital capitalism was marked by significant changes in the processes of value generation and capture in the economy. However, its impact on competition has only been recently explored. Taking a Law and Political Economy perspective we analyse four central developments challenging the traditional competition law framework and raising important questions regarding the broader institutional environment for the protection of competition: the transition towards financialisation and the logic of futurity, in particular in the digital economy, which gives rise to new competitive strategies of undertakings, structured around the ‘shareholder value’ principle; the extraction of economic value through new types of labour, which fall outside traditional employment relationships and hence affect the scope of competition law in the digital economy; the emergence of digital value chains that rely on multi-sided platforms and the formation of digital ecosystems, which challenge the usual focus of competition law on markets; the generation and extraction of value in the digital economy through new types of commodities and natural and artificial scarcities, that shape new social relations of production in accordance with the logic of futurity and lead to the emergence of competitive bottlenecks. Based on this analysis, we emphasize the need for a comprehensive theory-building for competition law and regulation that engages with these new processes of value generation and capture. We highlight how the underlying theories of ‘value’ and the institutional set-up have led to inequality and reduced competition. Existing institutions could not respond to these changes, which led to the initiation of significant institutional reforms. The prevailing conception of competition law had to evolve in congruence with different regulatory alternatives (a ‘toolkit’ approach). The article concludes by analysing how the emerging competition and regulatory compass for the digital economy in the European Union (EU) contributes to this dialectic between value generation/capture and institutional choice.competition has only been recently explored. Taking a Law and Political Economy perspective we analyse four central developments challenging the traditional competition law framework and raising important questions regarding the broader institutional environment for the protection of competition: the transition towards financialisation and the logic of futurity, in particular in the digital economy, which gives rise to new competitive strategies of undertakings, structured around the ‘shareholder value’ principle; the extraction of economic value through new types of labour, which fall outside traditional employment relationships and hence affect the scope of competition law in the digital economy; the emergence of digital value chains that rely on multi-sided platforms and the formation of digital ecosystems, which challenge the usual focus of competition law on markets; the generation and extraction of value in the digital economy through new types of commodities and natural and artificial scarcities, that shape new social relations of production in accordance with the logic of futurity and lead to the emergence of competitive bottlenecks. Based on this analysis, we emphasize the need for a comprehensive theory-building for competition law and regulation that engages with these new processes of value generation and capture. We highlight how the underlying theories of ‘value’ and the institutional set-up have led to inequality and reduced competition. Existing institutions could not respond to these changes, which led to the initiation of significant institutional reforms. The prevailing conception of competition law had to evolve in congruence with different regulatory alternatives (a ‘toolkit’ approach). The article concludes by analysing how the emerging competition and regulatory compass for the digital economy in the European Union (EU) contributes to this dialectic between value generation/capture and institutional choice

Towards an Abstract Domain for Resource Analysis of Logic Programs Using Sized Types

We present a novel general resource analysis for logic programs based on sized types.Sized types are representations that incorporate structural (shape) information and allow expressing both lower and upper bounds on the size of a set of terms and their subterms at any position and depth. They also allow relating the sizes of terms and subterms occurring at different argument positions in logic predicates. Using these sized types, the resource analysis can infer both lower and upper bounds on the resources used by all the procedures in a program as functions on input term (and subterm) sizes, overcoming limitations of existing analyses and enhancing their precision. Our new resource analysis has been developed within the abstract interpretation framework, as an extension of the sized types abstract domain, and has been integrated into the Ciao preprocessor, CiaoPP. The abstract domain operations are integrated with the setting up and solving of recurrence equations for both, inferring size and resource usage functions. We show that the analysis is an improvement over the previous resource analysis present in CiaoPP and compares well in power to state of the art systems.Comment: Part of WLPE 2013 proceedings (arXiv:1308.2055

Refinement by interpretation in {\pi}-institutions

The paper discusses the role of interpretations, understood as multifunctions that preserve and reflect logical consequence, as refinement witnesses in the general setting of pi-institutions. This leads to a smooth generalization of the refinement-by-interpretation approach, recently introduced by the authors in more specific contexts. As a second, yet related contribution a basis is provided to build up a refinement calculus of structured specifications in and across arbitrary pi-institutions.Comment: In Proceedings Refine 2011, arXiv:1106.348

When Europe encounters urban governance: Policy Types, Actor Games and Mechanisms of cites Europeanization

This paper examines European Union (EU) causal mechanisms and policy instruments affecting the urban domain throughout the lenses of the Europeanization approach. Instead of looking at EU instruments that are formally/legally consecrated to cities, we use theoretical public policy analysis to explore the arenas and the causal mechanisms that structure the encounters between the EU and urban systems of governance. Policy instruments are related to policy arenas and in turn to different mechanisms of transmission thus originating a typology of European Policy Modes. The paper focuses on four different EU instruments in the in the macro-area of sustainable development and proposes potential game-theoretical models for each of them. In the conclusions we highlight the differences between this approach and the traditional analysis of EU urban policy, and suggest avenues for future empirical research based on typologies of policy instruments and modes of Europeanization

Towards Parameterized Regular Type Inference Using Set Constraints

We propose a method for inferring \emph{parameterized regular types} for logic programs as solutions for systems of constraints over sets of finite ground Herbrand terms (set constraint systems). Such parameterized regular types generalize \emph{parametric} regular types by extending the scope of the parameters in the type definitions so that such parameters can relate the types of different predicates. We propose a number of enhancements to the procedure for solving the constraint systems that improve the precision of the type descriptions inferred. The resulting algorithm, together with a procedure to establish a set constraint system from a logic program, yields a program analysis that infers tighter safe approximations of the success types of the program than previous comparable work, offering a new and useful efficiency vs. precision trade-off. This is supported by experimental results, which show the feasibility of our analysis

Logics of Action, Globalization, and Employment Relations Change in China, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines

A logic of action framework is developed in order to conceptualize and understand the impact of globalization on employment relations, as well as to predict the future trajectory of employment relations. The argument is that the interplay between three different logics of action, i.e., the logic of competition, the logic of industrial peace, and the logic of employment-income protection determines the employment relations pattern in any given nation. The strengths of the logics themselves are determined by five often related factors, i.e., economic development strategy, the intensity of globalization, union strength, labor market features and government responsiveness to workers. Drawing on extensive field research on national policies and workplace practices in India, China, the Philippines and Malaysia, we show support for our framework. We find that ER patterns are reflect different combinations of logic strengths, that globalization\u27s impact on employment relations is not only complex, but contingent, and we suggest that long term convergence in employment relations is unlikely given variations in the combinations of logic strengths in different countries, and changes in logic strengths over time

European Energy Union? Caught between securitisation and ‘riskification’

Fears about the security of supplies have been central to debates about the development of an integrated EU energy policy over the past decade, leading to claims that energy has been ‘securitised’. Previous analyses have found, however, that although shared security concerns are frequently used as justification for further integration, they can also serve as a rationale for Member States to resist sharing sovereignty. Transcending this apparent paradox would require not just agreement about whether energy supplies are security concerns, but also agreement about what kind of security concern they are. In this article, we examine whether such an agreement could emerge through a comparative analysis of constructions of gas security in the UK and Poland. Utilising a framework that draws from both the philosophical and sociological wings of Securitisation Studies, we demonstrate that although gas has been elevated on the security agendas of both states, the specific logic of insecurity – securitisation or riskification – underpinning these constructions differs substantially, and is conditioned by distinct modes of governance in each Member State. This, we contend, limits the potential for further integration of EU energy policies in the context of the European Commission’s proposals for an ‘Energy Union’

Trust, but Verify: Two-Phase Typing for Dynamic Languages

A key challenge when statically typing so-called dynamic languages is the ubiquity of value-based overloading, where a given function can dynamically reflect upon and behave according to the types of its arguments. Thus, to establish basic types, the analysis must reason precisely about values, but in the presence of higher-order functions and polymorphism, this reasoning itself can require basic types. In this paper we address this chicken-and-egg problem by introducing the framework of two-phased typing. The first "trust" phase performs classical, i.e. flow-, path- and value-insensitive type checking to assign basic types to various program expressions. When the check inevitably runs into "errors" due to value-insensitivity, it wraps problematic expressions with DEAD-casts, which explicate the trust obligations that must be discharged by the second phase. The second phase uses refinement typing, a flow- and path-sensitive analysis, that decorates the first phase's types with logical predicates to track value relationships and thereby verify the casts and establish other correctness properties for dynamically typed languages