Does democracy promote economic development? This paper reviews recent attempts to address this question that exploited within-country variation. It shows that the answer is largely positive, but also depends on the details of democratic reforms. First, the sequence of economic vs political...

Two-sided platform firms serve distinct customer groups that are connected through interdependent demand, and include major businesses such as the media industry, banking, and the software industry. A well known textbook result in one-sided markets is that a government may increase a...

Newspapers are two-sided platforms that sell their product both to readers and advertisers. Media firms in general, and newspapers in particular, are considered important providers of information, culture and language in most countries. Newspapers are therefore given preferential tax treatment....

We study competition among market designers who create new trading platforms, when boundedly rational traders learn to select among them. We ask whether efficient platforms, leading to market - clearing trading outcomes, will dominate the market in the long run. If several market designers are...

This paper examines the efficient provision of goods in two-sided markets and characterizes optimal specific and ad-valorem taxes. We show that (i) a monopoly may have too high output compared to the social optimum; (ii) output may be reduced by imposing negative value-added taxes (subsidy) or...

This paper analyzes the effects of net neutrality regulation on investment incentives for Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs), and their implications for social welfare. We show that the ISP's decision on the introduction of discrimination across content depends on a...

Empirical evidence suggests that people dislike ads in media products like TV programs. In such situations standard economic theory prescribes that the advertising volume can be optimally reduced by levying a tax on ads. However, making use of recent advances in the theory of Industrial...

The object of this paper is to discuss on-line intermediation from the perspective of two-sided markets. It builds a simple model of the intermediation activity when trading partners are involved in a commercial relationship and uses it to illustrate some of the results that emerge in the...

The tensions between books and book markets as expressions of culture and books as products in profit-making businesses are analysed and insights from the theory of industrial organisation are given. Governments intervene in the market for books through laws concerning prices of books, grants...

This paper shows that consumers may buy more of a taxed good if it is sold by a two-sided platform firm. Two-sided platform industries serve distinct customer groups that are connected through interdependent demand, and include major businesses such as the media industry (newspapers/magazines...