The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

This article extends antitrust analysis to two-sided markets in which a virtual monopolist competes with local bricks-and-mortar dealers. The discussion examines the market power of an Internet market maker as well as an Internet matchmaker. The analysis shows that equilibrium in a two-sided market can be characterized as a one-sided market in which transaction demand depends on the bid-ask spread of the central market maker. This allows for a straightforward extension of critical demand elasticity and critical loss analysis from one-sided markets to two-sided markets, with antitrust tests based on the hypothetical monopolist's bid-ask spread. Antitrust analysis of a one-sided market also carries over to a two-sided market with a matchmaker where antitrust tests are based on the sum of participation fees.

This book compiles a set of pieces on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Ohio et. al. v. American Express and the preceding litigation for the treatment of multisided platforms under U.S. antitrust law. The authors consider that the Supreme Court ruling provides valuable guidance for antitrust analysis in such markets.

As technology and interconnectivity have continued to flourish, so too has an important and complex form of enterprise: the platform. Services like Uber, Google Search, Hulu, and American Express cater to distinct but deeply-interdependent “sides” of customers that derive value or revenues from one another, such as the patients and care providers on a health insurance network, or the advertisers and consumers on a social media platform. A hallmark of “two-sided markets”--those in which platforms compete--is the need to get both sides on board. The platform cannot operate successfully without a critical mass of users on both sides, which is often challenging. Platform economics has important implications for antitrust policy, as the interdependence between sides adds new complexity to the evaluation of competitive effects. It becomes critical to discern whether a platform-defendant's conduct is plausibly necessary to get both sides on board. Until recently, courts had dealt with platform commerce only on an ad hoc basis, without articulating any general principles for evaluating restraints within two-sided markets. But the Supreme Court is poised to bring platform competition to antitrust's frontier, as its impending decision in American Express is likely to influence how core aspects of antitrust law and procedure are to be applied within two-sided markets moving forward. Against this backdrop, this article provides a broad analysis of antitrust in two-sided markets. It begins with a discussion of the distinctive features of platform commerce, explaining how they sometimes clash with established intuition and methods in antitrust. The bulk of the paper addresses a wide range of different antitrust concerns that might emerge from platform conduct, with emphasis on discerning when the market's two-sidedness might plausibly justify the practice in question (and when it probably doesn't). The balance of the paper then addresses the issues in American Express--both the market definition and burden shifting questions before the Supreme Court, and the substance of the original antitrust claim.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: Good, Ruhr-University of Bochum, course: MA (ECUE), language: English, abstract: Two-sided markets consist of two or more exclusive groups, present simultaneously on a single platform. They both need each other. In order to succeed the platform provider must ensure active participation of both groups. In the beginning these bazaars face chicken-and-egg problem, which should be solved, sometimes even by providing free chicken. These markets include some of the most important industries in new economy such as mobile telephony companies, free TV services, OS suppliers, software providers, gaming companies, credit card companies, auction sites etc. Ebay and amazon are good examples of two-sided markets. In such two-sided markets buyers and sellers first trade with the intermediary/ies so as to gain access to the functionalities of a platform and then trade with each other under oligopolistic conditions. In chapter 1 of this paper an attempt has been made to describe finer nuances of two-sided markets. Thereafter I proceed to discuss the various dynamics of two-sided markets in chapter 2. Two-sided firms differ from traditional industries and they follow totally different business economics. Marginal cost does not help them in deciding optimal price. Pricing policies and other business strategies must be formulated in such a way that it should ensure active interaction of both groups. Pricing strategy should get both sides on board and should also solve chicken-and-egg problem. Chapter 3 describes the pricing policy adopted by two-sided markets. Chapter 4 deals with relevance of two-sided markets for competition policy. Competition Authorities do not need different set of rules to regulate these industries. However Competition Authorities must consider various economic principles that influence pricing and investment decisions in two-sided markets. Chapter 5

Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies provides an up-to-date account of modern industrial organization that blends theory with real-world applications. Written in a clear and accessible style, it acquaints the reader with the most important models for understanding strategies chosen by firms with market power and shows how such firms adapt to different market environments. It covers a wide range of topics including recent developments on product bundling, branding strategies, restrictions in vertical supply relationships, intellectual property protection, and two-sided markets, to name just a few. Models are presented in detail and the main results are summarized as lessons. Formal theory is complemented throughout by real-world cases that show students how it applies to actual organizational settings. The book is accompanied by a website containing a number of additional resources for lecturers and students, including exercises, answers to review questions, case material and slides.

This volume collects a series of essays that I have written over the last decade on businesses that create value by providing products that enable two or more different types of customers to get together, find each other, and exchange value. Part I presents background pieces on the economics of multi-sided platforms and industries in which these platforms are common. Part II examines the antitrust economics of two-sided markets including defining the difficult problem of defining the boundaries of competition. Part III comprises several papers that apply two-sided market analysis to web-based businesses. Part IV does the same for payment cards which is the industry that attracted much of the early two-sided analysis - in part because this framework was helpful for understanding the hotly debated issue of interchange fees. Part V collects several article and book chapters on software platforms. These platforms have become especially important in the last several years because they are now the basis for revolutionary developments with mobile devices (e.g. the iPhone and Android), social networking (Facebook in particular), and payments (PayPalX). The essays are published as originally written (usually, in fact, whatever version could be made freely available). The book itself consists of a series of urls (website addresses) that enable the reader to download these papers.

In recent years, market definition has come under attack as an analytical tool of competition law. Scholars have increasingly questioned its usefulness and feasibility. That criticism comes into sharper relief in dynamic, innovation-driven markets, which do not correspond to the static markets on which the concept of the relevant market was modelled. This book explores that controversy from a comparative legal perspective, taking into account both EU competition and US antitrust law. It examines the manifold ways in which courts and competition authorities in the EU and US have factored innovation-related considerations into market delineation, covering: innovative product markets, product differentiation, future markets, issues going beyond market definition proper – such as innovation competition, innovation markets and potential competition –, intellectual property rights, innovative aftermarkets and multi-sided platforms. This book finds that going forward, the role of market definition in dynamic contexts needs to focus on its function of market characterisation rather than on the assessment of market power.