Regulating increasingly digitalised networks and services

This paper gives a short overview of the impact which digitalisation has had over recent decades on selected cases of economic regulation, and of the changes it has brought and might bring, noting the need for the continuous adaptation of regulation in the public interest. It begins with an account of the role of digitalisation in the two most widely discussed sectors in recent decades: first, how incentive regulation using price controls in traditional utility sectors has recently incorporated piecemeal elements of digitalisation within a broadly unchanged framework; second, in the case of the more recently emerged digital platform sector, how a major fissure is observed between the EU's severe regulation of the largest platforms under the 2002 Digital Markets and Digital Services Acts, and USA's continuing reliance on competition law. It then considers the ongoing economy-wide pervasive spread of digitalisation via the use of Artificial Intelligence, the likelihood of its competitive supply and the nature of the case for its economic regulation. Finally, we note the likely use of AI in the very process of regulating both the two above-noted and other sectors and markets, and the implications of a possible ‘arms race’ between regulators and regulated firms in its use.