Belgium – Economic impact assessment – Study on modern pricing and risks of collusion

DG COMP is working on a follow-up to the comprehensive 2024 report: “Protecting competition in a changing world: Evidence on the evolution of competition in the EU during the past 25 years”. This report identified important changes over the past 25 years in the competitive environment (rising concentration, markups and profits, declining business dynamism). It also identified a number of likely structural and institutional drivers of those changes (rise of intangible investments, globalisation, regulation and M&A). The 2024 report did however not explore whether changes in management practices (strategies and tactics) may also have contributed to some of the detected trends. The present study seeks to address this gap by exploring whether the rise of modern pricing and revenue management strategies and tactics may have partly contributed to some of the observed changes in the competitive environment, inter alia by increasing the risk of collusion.