Over the past decade, empirical legal research has gained ground across many areas of law. Yet, its use in competition law remains limited, particularly within the European context. Most scholarship and policy-oriented research in this field continues to rely on traditional doctrinal methods. While these approaches remain valuable, they often fall short in capturing how competition law operates in practice: how enforcement decisions are made by competition authorities, how the law is interpreted by courts, and how legal rules are applied across jurisdictions.
The empirical study of the multi-level governance of EU competition law enforcement is of particular interest, as enforcement, adjudication, and regulation occur across the diverse legal systems, institutions, and cultural contexts of the EU Member States. This decentralised enforcement landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for empirical inquiry and provides a valuable framework for Comparative Empirical Legal Research.
The CCLP serves as a hub for the exploration of data-driven approaches to competition law and policy. It promotes the use of a broad range of (quantitative and qualitative) empirical methodologies to address both longstanding and emerging challenges in the field. We aim to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars and to provide a platform for sharing empirical research designs, methods, and findings.
We aim to:
Encourage the use of empirical legal methods in competition law scholarship
Promote methodological diversity, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches
Foster interdisciplinary collaboration between legal scholars, economists, and social scientists
Generate evidence-based insights that can inform and improve competition law and policy at both national and EU levels
For further details contact Or Brook.