Behrang Kianzad: Fairness as a norm in digital markets and AI

Fairness as a norm in law and economics of digital markets and artificial intelligence

Welcome to GP Seminar 3rd December!

Speaker:

Dr. Behrang Kianzad holds a LLM (2015) in Law from Lund University, Sweden, and a PhD (2022) in Intellectual Property Law and Competition Law and Economics from University of Copenhagen. Having completed a post-doc at University of Copenhagen, and another post-doc with a grant from Johan and Jakob Söderberg Foundation at Department of Business Law, School of Economics, Lund University, he is since September 2025 employed as senior researcher and lecturer at Institute of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, on a three-year grant from Swedish Competition Authority. He is also the founder of the European Researcher Network on Fairness in Digital Markets and Artificial Intelligence (FIDMA) and a reviewer for European Journal of Law and Economics and contributing author to Encyclopaedia of Law and Economics and Concurrences Global Dictionary.
Behrang Kianzad is an international expert on the matter of Competition Law, Economics and Policy, with strong foundations in legal philosophy, intellectual property law and law and economics, and have written and presented widely on the subject.

intersection of Intellectual Property and Competition Law

His publications are found at Oxford, Cambridge, Springer, Edward Elgar and some of the leading Competition Law, IP Law and Health Law journals.
His main research topics deal with the intersection of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, and the Law and Economics approaches related to both areas of law. He has presented his research at numerous international conferences, held expert meetings for various Competition Authorities, European Commission, World Health Organisation, Doctors Without Borders and many more.
Before joining the academia he worked some 15 years as journalist, editor and lecturer in journalism, where he co-authored a course book on multiculturalism, and went on to work and lecture on digital communications. Among his former employers are Swedish Radio & TV, TIME Magazine, European Commission and Swedish Aid Agency to name a few.

 

 

This article proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding (digital) fairness as consumer sovereignty, aiming to synthesize the goals of European competition and consumer protection law, and commenting on the traditional division between efficiency and fairness, but also between competition law and consumer protection law. The notion of consumer sovereignty, rooted in the works of William Hutt, has traditionally served as a normative benchmark in economic theory and policy, noting "as consumer, the individual is sovereign; as producer, he is subject" (Hutt, 1936). In modern digital markets, however, algorithmic collusion, dark patterns, and data-driven manipulations systematically erode this sovereignty by exacerbating information asymmetries and undermining autonomous choice. Further, we now know that the individuals sometimes attach higher value to generalized notions of fairness than their own "utility"; and they care about fairness and justice as normative, ex ante metrics, and not only as distributional or corrective ex post matters, nor as pure manifestations of altruism. The claim that fairness is not an economic concept seems refuted by the very essence of political economy, where the main element of rent theory was the unequitable effect it produced, as developed by David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Henry George et alia.

Building on a tripartite conceptualization of consumer sovereignty, in combination with insights in legal-philosophy, political economy and behavioral economics on Fairness, this article advances the interest conception in tandem with a right to “equitable exchange” as the most robust basis for a legal-economic theory of fairness for the purposes of both Competition Law as well as Consumer Protection Law. The analysis critically revisits the consumer welfare standard that dominates EU competition enforcement. While often equated with economic surplus maximization, this standard has proven conceptually and operationally ambiguous, with no clear consensus on whether it should prioritize price effects, consumer surplus, or broader social harms. Moreover, its reductionist alignment with total welfare frameworks risks masking wealth transfers and undermining distributive justice goals, especially when digital platforms exploit market power without transparent accountability. By contrast, defining digital fairness through consumer sovereignty shifts the focus from outcomes to processes and rights. This approach resonates with the principle of competition on the merits, increasingly recognized in EU law as a fairness benchmark that prohibits exclusionary or exploitative conduct that circumvents genuine competitive performance. In synthesizing insights from EU competition case law, consumer law doctrines, and economic ethics (including Kantian-choice models), this article argues for a unifying theory wherein digital fairness is the normative corollary of consumer sovereignty. It concludes that reimagining fairness in this way supports a principled integration of competition and consumer law, positioning both producers and institutions as agents accountable to sovereign consumers in a digitally intermediated marketplace.

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