According to the OECD Review on Telecommunication and Broadcasting in Mexico 2017, the performance of the industry since the reforms of 2013 and 2014 has been remarkable and demonstrates what can be achieved with evidence-based policy making. In my view, the Review rather demonstrates what can...

This brief note is a reply to the paper Two-sided Red Herrrings by Evans and Schmalensee (E&S), in which they denounce attempts by commentators in the American Express case to marginalize the findings of the literature on multi-sided platforms. In my view E&S are right in most of their...

In his article “Two-Sided Vs. Complementary Products” Filistrucchi explains in what respect two-sided platforms are different from firms producing complementary products, in spite of the similarity in pricing strategies. For him, the distinguishing feature of two-sided platforms is the...

The Mexican telecommunication reforms of 2013 and 2014 were inspired by a misguided perception of backwardness of the industry, by a blind belief in the benefits that can be brought about by competition in markets with strong economies of scale and by unrealistic expectations of what economic...

In a recent article, Daljord, Sørgard, and Thomassen criticize Katz and Shapiro for applying the standard formula for critical loss to the case in which the price of only one product of the candidate market is increased. They argue that the standard formula does not hold in that case and...

We identify some shortcomings of the hypothetical monopolist definition (HMD) of the relevant market as set out in the 1992 U.S. Merger Guidelines and followed by competition regimes worldwide, and propose a rephrased version to give the HMD a greater scientific rigor. It is shown that market...

This paper briefly describes the emergence of the relevant market concept in antitrust analysis, sets out its meaning and considers some controversial issues surrounding the concept, particularly with respect to substitution at the demand and at the supply side. Moreover, I sketch the way in...

Upward pricing pressure has recently become an important analytical tool in horizontal-merger assessment, where it is taken as a measure for the incentives of the merged firm to raise prices. I propose a comprehensive measure for pricing pressure, applicable to any off-equilibrium situation,...

A method is proposed to aggregate product-by-product elasticities over groups of products so as to obtain aggregate group-by-group elasticities. It is shown that price-cost margins charged by multi-product firms can be written as minus an aggregate inverse elasticity, just as the traditional...

The paper briefly describes the emergence since the 1950s of the concept of antitrust market, the hypothetical-monopolist approach for the definition of what was called the relevant market, the way in which it found broad acceptance among antitrust agencies around the world, some of its...