The Potential for Price Cartels Through The Use of Algorithms in The Digital Market

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-525-6_73How to use a DOI?

Keywords

cartel; price algorithm; digital market; circumstantial evidence

Abstract

Algorithms are increasingly being utilized to set pricing in the context of business competition in the Digital Market. As a result, potential breaches and anti-competitive impacts have already emerged. The algorithms become a new problem because it is difficult to discover the problem points in the system. Whether it is the fault of the algorithm system’s programmer, creator, or user. Therefore, the issues that will be examined in this study are as follows: (1) What is the potential for business competition law that arises from the use of price algorithms in the digital economy era? (2) How to prove the use of price algorithms in the digital economy era as a form of price cartel? The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential for business competition violations caused by the usage of price algorithms and provide a strategy for the proof of cartels using the algorithm. The research method used is doctrinal or normative juridical research with statutory, case, and comparative law approaches. The results of the research show that the price algorithm can cause unfair and uncompetitive business competition among business actors. Furthermore, business actors will collude to establish the same price in the relevant market. This circumstance has the potential to lead to the formation of a price cartel. This, of course, necessitates a difficult proving process. The strategy of proving through circumstantial evidence is important in determining whether or not there was a tacit agreement to carry out a price cartel through a price algorithm.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sukarmi
AU  - R. Patricia Audrey
AU  - Rona Almas Ramadhani
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/10/29
TI  - The Potential for Price Cartels Through The Use of Algorithms in The Digital Market
BT  - Proceedings of the 2023 Brawijaya International Conference (BIC 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 660
EP  - 669
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-525-6_73
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-525-6_73
ID  - 2024
ER  -