March 24th, 2026
Organized by the NET Institute, UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society and the Fubon Center.
This workshop examines interoperability not merely as a technical standard but as a policy tool for reshaping digital architectures characterized by hyperscalers, network effects, and data-driven complementarities. As digital infrastructures—from operating systems and cloud platforms to payments and AI systems—exhibit superlinear returns to scale and multi-sided feedback loops that generate persistent bottlenecks, regulators increasingly turn to interoperability mandates to counter market concentration. Such interventions may however also risk diluting beneficial complementarities, creating security vulnerabilities, and dampening investment incentives, demanding careful calibration.
The workshop, which will discuss some of the issues raised by this paper, adopts a multidisciplinary approach, integrating insights from network economics, business strategy, and innovation economics to develop a richer conceptual framework. We conceptualize digital ecosystems as lattices of complementarities—linking users, developers, data, and infrastructure—where scaling laws serve as empirical signatures of supermodular relationships. This framing enables deeper analysis of how interoperability obligations redistribute network complementarities across ecosystem layers and whether horizontal versus vertical interoperability mandates differ in their structural effects. More details here.
Workshop Organizers
Agenda
9:00 - Registration, Continental breakfast
9:10 - Opening remarks: Arun Sundararajan, NYU Stern
9:15 - Introductory remarks: Nicholas Economides, NYU Stern
9:20 – 10:50
Panel 1: Scaling Laws, Complementarities and Interoperability: Beyond Network Effects
Moderator: Ioannis Lianos, UCL Laws & NYU Law School
Nicholas Economides, Stern NYU
Scott Hemphill, NYU Law School
Barry Nalebuff, Yale School of Management (remotely)
Howard Shelanski, Georgetown University
Tommaso Valletti, Imperial College London (remotely)
Xavier Vives, IESE Business School (remotely)
10:50 – 11:20
Vint Cerf, Google (remotely)
11:20 – 11:35
11:35 – 13:00
Panel 2: Designing Interoperability in Social Media
Moderator: Nicholas Economides, NYU Stern
Eliana Garcés, ALP Economics
Annabelle Gawer, University of Surrey
Gonenc Gurkaynak, ELIG & UCL
Rossitza Kotzeva, European Commission (remotely)
Richard Reisman, The Foundation for American Innovation
Marshall Van Alstyne, Boston University (remotely)
13:00 – 13:40
13:40 – 15:10
Panel 3: Interoperability as an Antitrust Remedy and Limits: US and EU Perspectives
Moderator: Christos Makridis, Arizona State University & Gallup
Harry First, NYU Law School
Eleanor Fox, NYU Law School
Ioannis Lianos, UCL Laws & NYU Law School
Danica Noble, Antitrust & Consumer Protection Committee, Washington State Bar Association; formerly FTC
Dan Rubinfeld, NYU Law School and UC Berkeley
15:10 – 15:25
15:25 – 16:45
Panel 4: Digital Regulatory Regimes for Interoperability: Retrospective and Prospective - General (DMA, Data Act), Open
Banking/Finance, Open Health
Moderator: Eleanor Fox, NYU Law School
Elettra Bietti, Northeastern with Daji Landis, NYU and Sunoo Park, NYU Courant Institute
Martin Gaynor, Carnegie Mellon University
Christopher Yoo, University of Pennsylvania
Nicolo Zingales, FGV Brazil
16:45 - 17:45
New Challenges: AI, Blockchain, Metaverse
Moderator: Ioannis Lianos, UCL Laws & NYU Law School
Victor Oliveira Fernandes, CADE & IDP
Panos Ipeirotis, NYU Stern
Christos Makridis, Arizona State University & Gallup
Christopher Sprigman, NYU Law School
Arun Sundararajan, NYU Stern