Information sharing in competition policy

Executive summary

Information sharing between competitors is one of the more complex and contested areas of competition law enforcement.1 It can support legitimate market functioning, benchmarking and co-operation, but it can also reduce the uncertainty that competition is meant to preserve. Recent economic research and enforcement practice have made the assessment of such exchanges more exacting, particularly by challenging assumptions that certain forms of information sharing are necessarily low risk in all settings. This paper draws on recent economic literature and a review of enforcement practice and guidance across OECD jurisdictions to examine how competition authorities assess the benefits and risks of information sharing, and how these assessments are evolving.

The paper also identifies issues that are likely to require continued attention. These include how authorities should investigate and assess information exchange mediated through common digital systems or more opaque AI tools; how responsibility should be allocated where platforms, data intermediaries or other third parties structure or disseminate competitor information; and whether existing investigative and evidentiary tools will remain sufficient as these systems become more complex. These developments do not suggest that existing frameworks have become obsolete, but they may increasingly test how those frameworks are applied in practice.

Key findings

Reassessing the risks of information sharing

Older heuristics about which forms of information sharing are relatively low risk are under increasing pressure. Recent economic research has refined the traditional framework, most clearly by showing that aggregated data may still be competitively significant where it permits sufficiently precise inference about rivals’ conduct. Recent practice and guidance also suggest greater caution towards older assumptions that aggregated, historical or publicly available information is necessarily benign in all settings. In some jurisdictions, this has meant less reliance on fixed temporal or formal thresholds and greater emphasis on a contextual assessment of whether the exchange, in the market concerned, is capable of reducing strategic uncertainty and facilitating co‑ordination.

Information exchange may be a competition concern in its own right

Recent decisional practice and guidance in several jurisdictions show that information exchange may, in some circumstances, be treated as a competition concern in its own right, rather than only as evidence of a broader infringement. This approach is not universal. Jurisdictions continue to differ in how they characterise such exchanges, the evidentiary thresholds they apply, and the weight they give to presumptions, market context and likely effects.

Platforms, data intermediaries and algorithms can shape competitive risk

Concerns about information exchange through intermediaries are not new but are increasingly being applied to new technological settings. Competition authorities have long scrutinised exchanges mediated through trade associations and other third parties. More recent guidance and case law extend the same logic to common platforms, data intermediaries and algorithmic tools, recognising that the mechanism through which information is structured, processed and disseminated may itself affect competitive risk. This is particularly relevant where digital systems make competitor information more frequent, granular, automated or actionable than traditional forms of exchange.

Note

← 1.  This policy paper was prepared by Greg Jackson and Eduardo Mangada Real de Asúa of the OECD Competition Division with support from Livia Labelle. Helpful comments and review were provided by Ori Schwartz, Cristina Volpin, Despina Pachnou Carolina Alessi, and Beatriz Marques, also of the OECD Competition Division. The note was prepared to serve as background material for discussions on “Information sharing in Competition Policy” taking place at the June 2026 session of the OECD Competition Committee.