Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, as well as Twitter – the FANG companies – have transformed society with both positive and negative effects. Soaring consumer access to information, news, social networks, and entertainment has been stimulated by the ever-more ubiquitous and falling...

There can be no doubt that the FANG companies – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, as well as Twitter – have transformed society since their emergence. Like all social transformations, the changes wrought by their services have had ripple effects that are both positive and negative. On...

Digital markets have raised a number of new competition challenges. Ex-post competition policy appears not to be able to address them in their entirety and with the necessary speed. There is considerable consensus, among academics and policy-makers, that ex-ante regulatory policies are needed to...

In many countries hospital regulation undergoes fundamental change. In reaction to steadily increasing costs, authorities switch from cost of service regulation to prospective payment systems (PPS). While it seems clear that this new scheme sets strong cost saving incentives, this is not so...

This paper investigates the strategies of a data broker in selling information to one or to two competing firms that can price-discriminate consumers. The data broker can strategically choose any segment of the consumer demand (information structure) to sell to firms that implement third-degree...

Price-matching guarantees (PMGs) are offers to match or beat a competitor's price on a specific item. Such guarantees are extremely common in U.S. retail practice, and appear on their face to be very beneficial to consumers because they make an implicit promise to the consumer that she "won't...

We document the following stylized facts for the Mexican retail market for gasoline using data for 2018-2019: (1) consumer prices adjust slower than wholesale prices; (2) more competition, in the form of a higher density of stations, implies lower markups and lower prices; and (3) more...

Regulations of product markets serve legitimate objectives but, when ill-designed, can impose unnecessary restrictions on competition, and therefore on business dynamism, productivity and ultimately well-being. A recent update of the OECD’s Product Market Regulation indicator for Costa Rica...

Zahlreiche Märkte sind durch die Coronavirus-Pandemie von Unternehmensaufgaben und Insolvenzen, Unternehmenszusammenschlüssen und verminderten Gründungsanreizen betroffen. Durch den Digitalisierungsschub infolge der Kontaktbeschränkungen ist zudem zu erwarten, dass Digitalmärkte mit...

This paper analyzes and reviews the rapid transformation of Russian telecommunications and Internet operators over the past 20 years, from small town phone service suppliers, to top-5 global players. The approach taken is a dynamic eco-systems oriented analysis of the past 20 years evolution, to...