Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

EU climate targets: economist Benedict Probst explains the contribution of carbon offsets in an interview

The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition celebrated the Grand Opening of its new premises at Munich‘s Stachus on 20 October 2025.

A new interdisciplinary study provides representative figures on the activation of the eID function of the German ID card and makes recommendations for the further development.

New initiative: How to leverage the rich industrial heritage of Ukraine's pharmaceutical industry in partnership with the EU.

Opportunities, hurdles, solutions

Social media shapes public debate, sways elections, and frames how we see the world. While some demand tighter regulation, others push for less. An interdisciplinary team is investigating how the EU is governing the digital public space—and pushing for stronger diversity measures along the way.

Vaccines, medicines, food, fashion: different industries are keen to make use of genetic resources and the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples. But who owns such assets, who can make use of them, and at what price? Despite the agreements in place and a UN conference in Cali, all this remains unclear. Giving an overview of the regulatory landscape legal expert Pedro Henrique D. Batista knows which approaches are needed today.

A new meta-study has revealed that emission reductions from climate mitigation projects are significantly lower than claimed. Together with coauthors, I systematically reviewed more than 60 empirical studies, uncovering substantial quality issues with carbon credits.

The project addresses the nexus between data and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With partners from Senegal, India and Brazil, we highlight sector-specific strategies for implementing effective data governance systems in emerging economies. The aim is to forge data governance strategies that are tailored to the needs of each economy and facilitate both better decision-making and resource allocation, thereby increasing transparency and empowering citizens.

Rapid advancements in technology and automation call for a deep understanding of how human behaviour changes when humans interact with technology-powered agents in place of human-to-human exchanges. It is important to take such changes in human behaviour into account when creating a legal and policy framework to regulate automation. To this end, we have prepared a review of interdisciplinary findings in this field.

One of the biggest challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the provision of sufficient quantities of vaccine over months. While rich industrialised countries ordered huge quantities early on, poorer states suffered from a glaring shortage. Against this background, several of them have requested among other things the temporary suspension of patent rights at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Our team has analysed the legal situation.

Data access appears as a key condition for innovation and public welfare in the digital economy. Designing an adequate regulatory framework is at the centre of the current research of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, which analyses the respective issues from an interdisciplinary perspective of law and economics. Against this backdrop, the Institute developed the scientific concept of the conference "Consumer Law Days 2019" held by the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection.