A large proportion of our online activity takes place through a handful of platforms. With increased hostility towards the prevalence of vertical integration in tech markets and calls for the breaking up of profitable technology companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, the time is...

This paper expands on an idea recently voiced by neo-Brandeisians and formally modelled by economists in the past two decades – namely, that the Chicago School’s arguments for the harmless and efficiency generating nature of vertical integration do not apply on zero-priced monetized markets....

Over the last years, several reports highlighted the market power of very large online platforms that are gatekeeping intermediaries between businesses and consumers, and the difficulty for classic competition policy tools to deal effectively with anti-competitive practices in these platforms....

Theoretical research has investigated the relevance of entry-inducing effects as countervailing factor to a merger-related increase in market power. We use route-level data for the America West Airlines – US Airways merger (2005) to investigate whether such an effect can be identified...

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is a recently-formed division of the Patent Office in which patents can be challenged as invalid, and which differs from federal courts in a number of respects. We investigate whether monopolist-patentees and their prospective rivals are using the PTAB...

The Authority for Consumers & Markets has conducted a study into entry barriers of the Dutch retail banking sector. The entry of new players or even merely the threat thereof will increase competition in the Dutch banking sector. This is important because the Dutch retail banking sector has...

In merger analysis, ease of entry, when present, trumps competitive concerns and allows market behavior, such as a merger, to proceed unchallenged. Thus, entry plays a key role in every antitrust study. That said, it is surprising that entry analysis is inconsistently defined, both in the courts...

Worldwide, the overwhelming majority of large horizontal mergers are cleared by antitrust authorities unconditionally. The presumption seems to be that efficiencies from these mergers are sizeable. We calculate the compensating efficiencies that would prevent a merger from harming consumers for...

The flow of resources across sectors to their best use, with concomitant entry and exit, is central to the functioning and welfare properties of a market economy. Nevertheless, most industrial organization research, including applications to competition policy, undertakes partial equilibrium...

Envelopment is an effective form of market entry that facilitates competition among platforms. Nevertheless, many commentators have focused on the anticompetitive potential of envelopment, and some have argued for regulation of platforms because of that concern. These calls for regulation are...