Industry concentration has been rising in the US since 1980. Does this signal declining competition and need for a new antitrust policy? Or are other factors causing concentration to rise? This paper explores the role of proprietary information technology (IT), which could increase the...

Economists have long recognized that advertising has two main functions: to inform and to persuade. In the information age, the information function is obsolete, because consumers can get all the product information they want from a quick Google search. That makes virtually all advertising today...

The vast amount of product information available to consumers through online search renders most advertising obsolete as a tool for conveying product information. Advertising remains useful to firms only as a tool for persuading consumers to purchase advertised products. In the mid-twentieth...

Free!! Google and Facebook!!! We all know them, what to worry about? Everything! The giants of the internet are expanding into every corner of the economy, politics and our lives. They control the majority of digital advertising; Alphabet, Google's parent, and Facebook receive more than 60...

Free!! Google and Facebook!!! We all know them, what to worry about? Everything! The giants of the internet are expanding into every corner of the economy, politics and our lives. They control the majority of digital advertising; Alphabet, Google's parent, and Facebook receive more than 60...

In the wide and increasing attention for the so-called "new economy", two, not necessarily compatible, issues meet the eye. Firstly, most discussions apply macro-economic concepts, yet secondly their general gist is that the new economy demands new tools for analysis. In this paper, the existing...

Is there a problem with large technology firms, or platforms, purchasing nascent competitors and suppressing competition before they can mature into vibrant competitors? Further, if there is a problem, are the current antitrust laws and the enforcement of those laws sufficient to combat the...

Professor Varian's overview analyzes a variety of competitive strategies used by high-tech companies. These strategies - such as personalized pricing, lock-in, and the adoption of uniform compatibility standards to fuel bandwagon effects - often rely on intellectual property, typically...

From Facebook acquiring WhatsAPP and Instagram to Microsoft buying out Linkedin, Skype and Github or Google swallowing Motorola Mobility, DoubleClick or Nest Labs, mergers and acquisitions in the digital economy have been controversial. Some of the concerns have been fairly traditional. While...

In dealing with telecom operator and internet mergers in the late 1990s the European Commission adopted a pessimistic view of competition based on the then emerging theory of network effects. This paper takes a short and critical look at the Commission's use of network effects theory, and its...