Beyond Nudges: AI Agents, Antitrust, and Complexity Economics

Behavioral economics is the intuitive framework for analyzing AI agents and chatbot-induced challenges in antitrust. It is the insufficient one. The analytical puzzle AI agents pose for antitrust has three dimensions: how recommendations shape consumer beliefs about products and markets; how AI agent architectures interact with and reshape the preferences that guide consumer choice; and how recommendation-driven markets alter market dynamics in ways that may or may not produce competitive harm. BE sees primarily the first. Complexity economics sees all three.