Digital platforms, empowered by artificial intelligence algorithms, facilitate efficient interactions between consumers and merchants that allow the collection of profiling information which drives innovation and welfare. Private incentives, however, lead to information asymmetries resulting in...

The rise of the platform economy has been the subject of celebration and critique. Platform companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Postmates have been rightfully celebrated as positively disruptive, introducing much–needed competition in industries that have been otherwise over–mature and...

We examine the merits of competition cases brought against Google with respect to alleged search bias. The four key steps in a structured investigation into an alleged abuse of dominance/monopolization/unfair method of competition are:1) characterization of the conduct, 2) market definition, 3)...

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...

Digital platforms, empowered by artificial intelligence algorithms, facilitate efficient interactions between consumers and merchants that allow the collection of profiling information which drives innovation and welfare. Private incentives, however, lead to information asymmetries resulting in...

Having its first commercial breakthrough with ChatGPT, in 2023 artificial intelligence (AI) has rung in the fourth industrial revolution. This article outlines the technicalities and economics underlying generative AI, and what they mean for competition in digital markets and for antitrust and...

Market power on each side of a multisided platform, whether in the form of increasing prices or decreasing quality, is constrained by the risk of losing sales on the other sides. That tends to weaken market power on each side and encourages platforms to keep prices lower and quality higher than...

This paper will examine three recent instances involving competition concerns on the Internet. The Internet at its inception was widely viewed as not suffering from any competition concerns, however in the last ten years, with on the one hand the emergence of major Internet corporations, and on...

This article provides an overview of the competitive issues surrounding online platforms. The general theme is that while much has been made of the structural features of online platforms there is little hard evidence that these are durable monopolies. Nonetheless, there are concerns about the...

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) initiative, which is set to introduce ex ante regulatory rules for “gatekeepers” in online platform markets, is one of the most important pieces of legislation to emanate from Brussels in recent decades. It not only has the potential to...