Antitrust and upstream platform power plays : a policy in bed with procrustes

"Large digital platform firms have been in the doghouse of antitrust decision-makers worldwide since the tail end of the last decade. Trustbusters agree, urgent intervention is needed. Interestingly, it is the plight of victimized suppliers-of merchants, app developers, publishers, labourers, and the likes, who are upstream in the platform economy value chain-that has topped the policy agenda, prompting scrutiny of an almost unprecedented intensity. Amid such anxieties, this book asks a somewhat provocative question: are upstream platform power plays really "competition problems", ones for antitrust, at that? The apparently obvious answer-"yes"-is deceptively simple. For one, it contradicts contemporary antitrust's single-minded focus on consumers, which has all but erased supplier exploitation in the brick-and-mortar economy from the policy's radar. For another, the wider antitrust community remains bitterly divided when it comes to judging platform practices. Plus, if any consensus could be had, it would almost certainly confirm the longstanding tenet that antitrust cannot be about supplier welfare, as such. These paradoxes call for a policy introspection-precisely what this book provides. The analysis offered here is altogether normative, theoretical and practical. Normative because it engages in a supplier-mindful soul-searching exercise, which advances our understanding of antitrust's foundations; theoretical as it sheds multidisciplinary insights on upstream effects in the platform economy and develops new frameworks for rationalizing them; practical since it takes a deep dive into the complex antitrust machinery whilst staying attuned to other available levers of public action."