Amelia Fletcher: Professor, Competition Regulator, Indie Pop Icon

Amelia Fletcher is almost certainly unique in British public life: a highly regarded competition economist who has spent decades at the centre of some of the biggest questions about how markets work, while sustaining a serious and still-active career in music. In this episode she talks to Paul Johnson and Michael Kell about both — how she ended up in economics almost by accident, what competition policy actually does and why it matters, and what it means to have kept two very different creative lives running in parallel for forty years. As an economist, she spent twelve years as chief economist at the Office of Fair Trading, helped establish the Competition and Markets Authority's digital markets unit, served on the board of the Financial Conduct Authority, and co-authored the Furman Review — the landmark 2019 report that recommended pro-competitive regulation of the big tech platforms, and which shaped both the UK's Digital Markets Act and the EU's equivalent legislation. She is now Professor of Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia. As a musician, she formed Talulah Gosh in her first year at Oxford, turned down a major label deal to stay at university, carried the bands Heavenly, Marine Research, Tender Trap, The Catenary Wires and Swansea Sound alongside her career as an economist, and now runs Skep Wax Records with her husband Rob Pursey. Heavenly currently has 430,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — a number Amelia notes translates to roughly £4.30 in income. In this conversation, Paul explores the substance of her economics: how competition policy actually works, what the OFT and CMA do and why it matters, what went wrong with Facebook's acquisition of Instagram why digital markets are different from ordinary markets,  what the Furman Review's recommendations actually were and where they have led the pressures on the CMA to approve mergers in the name of growth, and why Amelia thinks those pressures are dangerous. Michael explores the person behind the public role: how Amelia ended up studying economics almost by accident having taken science A-levels, why she chose consultancy over academia after her PhD, what it was like to leave a large public institution and return to university life, and what — after all of it — she is prouder of: the economics or the music. 0:00 - Introduction 0:21 - Introducing Amelia Fletcher 1:44 - Welcome Amelia Fletcher 1:49 - A sketch of her music career 2:53 - Starting a band at Oxford: Talulah Gosh 3:38 - Heavenly, through her master's and doctorate 4:23 - Carrying both careers together 4:34 - A Riot Grrrl resurgence via TikTok 5:24 - How successful is the music, really? 6:39 - Handing back to Paul: economics beginnings 7:43 - Why economics? A complete accident 9:00 - The PhD years with John Vickers 10:46 - Into economic consulting 12:25 - Joining the Office of Fair Trading as chief economist 13:00 - What the OFT/CMA actually does 16:23 - Example: unauthorized overdraft fees 17:24 - Example: the building industry cartel 18:16 - The CMA, growth, and political pressure 21:58 - Sainsbury's/Asda and Microsoft/Activision mergers 24:11 - A learning moment: the Facebook/Instagram merger 26:17 - Leaving for academia and digital regulation 27:20 - The origins of the Furman Review 28:41 - Assembling the panel 29:24 - What makes digital markets different 33:51 - Furman's recommendations: data sharing and fair access 35:48 - Economics and music, side by side 37:43 - The economics of music: the Universal/Downtown merger 41:46 - Academia versus practice 44:56 - Economist or musician? 46:27 - Closing thanks 46:48 - Outro Links: If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at https://michaelkellcoaching.com. Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Follow-Money...) and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Challenging-...)