This paper shows that two related aspects of attention platforms are important for the sound economic analysis of public policy including antitrust: First, attention platforms generate valuable content. Even though people often don't pay for content, we know from revealed preference that content...

The Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, in the course of considering mergers and acquisitions as well as other policy matters, have conducted detailed investigations of the wired broadband business, and the intertwined business of providing linear programming....

This paper is one of the major economic studies I submitted to the FCC in opposition to the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. After reviewing and rebutting some of the economic theories and evidence put forth by Comcast in support of the merger the paper presents an antitrust...

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...

“Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched, or transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century. They power everything from mobile phones and automobile navigation systems to search engines and web portals. They have been the source of enormous...

Recent claims that online platforms have secured permanent monopolies, protected by barriers to entry from network effects and stockpiles of data, and should be the focus of intense antitrust and regulatory scrutiny, are inconsistent with the economics, technology, and history of online...

Consumers have shifted their consumption of online content dramatically from websites that they browse from a personal computer to apps that they use on mobile devices. Marketers have moved with the eyeballs, particularly since people use their smartphones much of the day and carry them wherever...

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...

The two-sided analysis of platform businesses isn’t pro-defendant or pro-plaintiff. By accounting for business reality and modern economics, it helps courts and enforcement agencies reach the right decision and thereby reduce the likelihood of false negatives as well as false positives....

It is currently fashionable to argue that certain “network” industries—like telephones in the old days or various internet platforms today—are subject to market power because of “network effects”: lock-in by early movers. However, recent history belies that; Facebook displaced...