"Two-sided" markets have two different groups of customers that businesses have to get on board to succeed - there is a "chicken-and-egg" problem that needs to be solved. These industries range from dating clubs (men and women), to video game consoles (game developers and users), to credit cards...

"Two-sided" markets have two different groups of customers that businesses have to get on board to succeed - there is a "chicken-and-egg" problem that needs to be solved. These industries range from dating clubs (men and women), to video game consoles (game developers and users), to credit cards...

Times-Picayune, a 1953 Supreme Court decision involving newspapers, has gained notoriety from the Court's American Express decision concerning credit-card networks. The Amex dissent argued that the Court had already decided how to apply the rule-of-reason analysis to two-sided platforms in...

Between September 2014 and September 2016 high courts in multiple jurisdictions released five decisions that address applying competition law to matchmakers that operate virtual or physical platforms for connecting multiple groups of customers. The decisions rely, directly or indirectly, on the...

The antitrust laws of the United States have, from their inception, allowed firms to acquire significant market power, to charge prices that reflect that market power, and to enjoy supra-competitive returns. This article shows that this policy, which was established by the U.S. Congress and...

Platform businesses that facilitate connections between different stakeholders play an increasingly prominent role in the economy. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a seminal decision, Ohio et. al. v. American Express, on the analysis of antitrust issues involving these sorts of businesses....

This paper presents an overview of what economists can say about vertical constraints by multi-sided platforms at this stage in the development of our knowledge about the economics of these businesses. It describes the general procompetitive and anticompetitive uses of vertical restraints by...

Online markets have changed as a result of people shifting massively from using personal computers and browsers to using technologically powerful mobile devices and apps. These changes cover leading online players, consumer behavior, and products. The use of smartphones and mobile apps, and the...

Though network effects are important for multisided platforms, the simple winner-take-all notion that they always give larger platforms an insurmountable advantage over smaller rivals has been disproven by numerous counterexamples. It is now being argued that big data is power, so that a firm...

Many online businesses, including most of the largest platforms, seek and provide attention. These online attention rivals provide products and features to obtain the attention of consumers and sell some of that attention, through other products and services, to merchants, developers and others...