Dominant or apparently dominant internet platform increasingly become subject to both antitrust investigations and further-reaching political calls for regulation. While Google is currently in the focus of the discussion, the next candidate is already on the horizon - the ubiquitous online...

Something old and important is lost sight of in a case like Ohio v. American Express, the Supreme Court's recent adoption of "platform" or "two-sided market" theory in American antitrust, and in theoretical efforts like the one on which it is based. A rarely discussed idea built in to American...

Critics from both the right and the left claim that modern antitrust doctrine, rooted in consumer welfare, is inadequate to handle the challenges of the twenty-first century economy. They express nostalgia for 1960s antitrust, when the field had no clear objectives and cases were decided on...

The ministerial proposal for a 10th amendment of the German competition law particularly addresses abuse control and seeks to tighten this pillar of competition policy against the background of the challenges from the digital economy. Next to extending the classic policy instruments of abuse...

This paper looks at how EU and U.S. competition laws deal with restrictions of online sales in distribution agreements, respectively. The growing importance of online commerce highlights how vertical competition law enforcement is still an important building block of competition law policies,...

We study empirically the price effects of upstream cartels that sell through downstream retailers to final consumers. We focus on a German coffee producer cartel that colluded under two different regimes: (i) involving wholesale prices in 2003 and (ii) with additional resale price maintenance...

This paper examines the competitive effects of resale price maintenance (RPM) through inventory decisions under demand uncertainty. We focus on the Japanese publishing industry where RPM is allowed. We develop and estimate a model of RPM in which price and inventory are determined before demand...

We show that the rise in ebook prices following Apple's entry into the market can be explained by Amazon's Kindle device losing its essential position. When consumers began accessing Amazon's ebooks using third-party devices, such as the iPad, Amazon's incentive to keep ebook prices low...

When Apple entered the ebook market, prices rose. A recent court decision found Apple guilty of colluding with publishers, blaming the price hike, in part, on agency agreements and prohibiting their use. Building a model to compare these with traditional wholesale agreements, we identify a...