While the various initiatives in several jurisdictions to impose ex ante regulation on “digital gatekeepers” – i.e., large online platforms that are necessary intermediaries between business users and their customers, and which are typically protected by high barriers to entry – have...

Should the FTC have allowed Zillow to acquire its foremost rival, Trulia? It is increasingly well-accepted that digital platforms tend toward dominance in their immediately adjacent relevant-product markets. Google, for example, has long held a majority share of the markets for general-search...

Platforms, or two-sided markets, have become a topic of significant discussion in competition law over the past decade, culminating in the recent US Supreme Court decision in Ohio v. American Express Co. This note discusses externalities in platforms. Indirect network effects, one type of...

Robert Bork's Antitrust Paradox (1978) has been justification for lack of antitrust behavior for over four decades. His test essentially asks if consumers are harmed by the pricing practices of the firm in the market in which they purchase the good or service. Even if these firms are monopoly or...

Platforms like Uber, Google Search, and Hulu pervade the modern economic landscape. A platform caters to distinct but deeply-interdependent “sides” of customers that derive value or revenues from one another, such as the merchants and cardholders on a credit card network, or the advertisers...

Large platforms are often accused of refusing to serve (or discriminating against) competing sellers in adjacent product markets. Antitrust law labels such activity a unilateral “refusal to deal” (RTD) and evaluates it under a predation-like framework shaped by the two leading RTD cases,...

The regulation of digital platforms is frequently framed as a legal and institutional trade-off. Should policy makers “regulate” or should they “break-up” Big Tech? Should they decentralize digital power or should they transform companies like Google into accountable bottlenecks? These...

This article adopts a holistic approach to China’s antitrust strategy towards the platform economy. As enforcers everywhere come to terms with the unique challenges posed by the market power amassed by digital gatekeepers, China’s sudden, fierce attack on its own tech giants has been as...

In this paper, we review the overall micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise landscape in Asia, including the challenges and constraints faced by enterprises in physical (offline) and online markets. We then explore the unique circumstances and externalities that arise due to the special...