Massimo Motta (BSc Bocconi, Milan, 1987; PhD Louvain, 1991) is Research Professor at ICREA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and Barcelona School of Economics, since 2010. He was Chief Economist at the European Commission in 2013-2016, where he coordinated the EC's economic analysis on antitrust, mergers and state aid. He was previously a professor at Univ. Bologna (2007-2010), European University Institute, Florence (1998-2008) and UPF (1992-1998). His research is on industrial organization, and it has been published in the top international economic journals. Massimo's book on Competition Policy: Theory and Practice (Cambridge UP, 2004) is the standard reference on antitrust. He has also co-authored a book on Exclusionary Practices (Cambridge UP, 2018) and on Market Investigations (Cambridge UP, 2022). He was President of the European Association of Researchers in Industrial Economics.

Massimo has been working on a number of topics related to the welfare effects of business practices. In particular, he has been studying exclusionary practices - such as predation, rebates, exclusive contracts, tying, refusal to deal - that dominant firms may adopt to exclude rivals from the market, and the effects of mergers and acquisitions (on which he is now writing a new book). Both sets of issues are very important in today's digital economies. His current research focuses on the conduct of the big digital platforms. Among other topics, he has been studying the effects of acquisitions of start-ups by big firms and the optimal policy towards them; dominant firms' decisions not to allow access to their platforms; or their strategies to imitate products and applications of complementors, to prevent the possibility of being challenged by them.