The rise and success of digital platforms (such as Airbnb, Amazon, Booking, Expedia, Ebay, and Uber) rely, to a large extent, on their ability to address two major issues. First, to effectively facilitate transactions, platforms need to resolve the problem of trust in the implicit or explicit...

Across the world, regulators and policy makers are grappling with how to establish a competitive, safe and fair online environment that also safeguards users’ fundamental rights as citizens. Ahead of the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), this book “Digital markets and online...

With the growing economic and societal importance of online platforms, the question of their liability for illegal content or products they host becomes more important. Based on an analysis of platforms' incentives, we address the appropriate liability rule for hosting service providers and...

Consider a two-product firm that decides on the quality of each product. Product quality is unknown to consumers. If the firm sells both products under the same brand name, consumers adjust their beliefs about quality subject to the performance of both products. We show that if the probability...

"Policy makers around the world are increasingly worried about developments in some digital markets and in particular digital platforms which use business practices to obtain an advantage vis-à-vis competitors in vertically related activities (e.g., self-preferencing) or which use their...

In many economic sectors - the digital industries being first and foremost - the market power of dominant firms has been steadily increasing and is rarely challenged by competitors. Existing competition laws and regulations have been unable to make markets more contestable. The book argues that...

This report provides an overview on the economics of attention intermediaries. It addresses the following questions: What are the economics of attention intermediaries? For competition policy, how should markets be defined and market power of attention intermediaries be assessed? What theories...

Digital platforms have reshaped many product markets and play an increasingly important role in economies around the globe. Some of these platforms have become powerful players and may possess a lot of market power. Economists use a number of indicators to assess market power. In this article we...