Behavioral patterns in media consumption are changing. With the upcoming of video-on-demand platforms, so-called ‘binge-watching' gained broad awareness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first economic analysis explicitly on binge-watching. We approach the phenomenon by arguing that...

We review the economics of superstars, originally developed for stars in traditional media, and discuss whether they are applicable for the (allegedly) novel phenomenon of stars in social media (influencer, micro-celebrities). Moreover, we analyse potentially new factors for creating social...

The collective sale of football broadcasting rights constitutes a cartel, which, in the European Union, is only allowed if it complies with a number of conditions and obligations, inter alia, partial unbundling and the no-single-buyer rule. These regulations were defined with traditional...

This paper provides an economic analysis of recent vertical and horizontal mergers in the U.S. industry for audiovisual media content, including the AT&T-Time Warner and the Disney-Fox mergers. Using a theory-driven approach, we examine economic effects of these types of mergers on market...

The economic literature on the superstar phenomenon provides empirical evidence on different types of stars, above all athletes and musicians. A new and, to our best knowledge, unexplored area of this star theory arouse with the development of social media markets. In this paper, we analyse a...

Social media stars create stardom with uploads on social media pages like YouTube, TikTok or Instagram. One of the most popular platforms, especially designed to upload picture contents, is the service “Instagram” owned by Facebook. The growing social, cultural and economic power of social...

German Abstract: Dieser Beitrag fasst die ökonomischen Besonderheiten von Unterhaltungsmärkten zusammen und legt dabei einen besonderen Fokus auf Digitalisierungseffekte. Dabei werden die Aspekte Erfahrungsgüter und Qualität, Fixkostendegression & Güterheterogenität, Superstareffekte, die...

The paper analyses the economics behind algorithmic search and recommender services, based upon personalized user data. Such services play a paramount role for online services such as marketplaces (e.g. Amazon), audio streaming (e.g. Spotify), video streaming (e.g. Netflix, YouTube), app stores,...

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...

German abstract: Novelle des Gesetzes gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen („GWB-Digitalisierungsgesetz„) soll die deutschen Wettbewerbsregeln so reformieren, dass sie einen geeigneten Ordnungsrahmen für eine zunehmend digitalisierte Wirtschaft darstellen. Im vorliegenden Beitrag diskutieren...