Recent claims that online platforms have secured permanent monopolies, protected by barriers to entry from network effects and stockpiles of data, and should be the focus of intense antitrust and regulatory scrutiny, are inconsistent with the economics, technology, and history of online...

Between September 2014 and September 2016 high courts in multiple jurisdictions released five decisions that address applying competition law to matchmakers that operate virtual or physical platforms for connecting multiple groups of customers. The decisions rely, directly or indirectly, on the...

A surprising amount of debate leading up to the Supreme Court's decision in American Express, and the commentary following this landmark ruling, attempt to trivialize and marginalize the modern economic learning on multi-sided platforms. Despite these efforts the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and...

Times-Picayune, a 1953 Supreme Court decision involving newspapers, has gained notoriety from the Court's American Express decision concerning credit-card networks. The Amex dissent argued that the Court had already decided how to apply the rule-of-reason analysis to two-sided platforms in...

This paper shows that two related aspects of attention platforms are important for the sound economic analysis of public policy including antitrust: First, attention platforms generate valuable content. Even though people often don't pay for content, we know from revealed preference that content...

This paper presents some basic principles for conducting the antitrust analysis of multisided platforms that courts could adapt to the particulars of their jurisdictions and case laws. It has a particular focus on measuring consumer surplus for platform businesses and the implications of that...

A multisided platform (MSP) serves as an intermediary for two or more groups of customers who are linked by indirect network effects. Recent research has found that MSPs are significant in many industries and that some standard economic results-such as the Lerner Index-do not apply to them, in...

Two-sided platform businesses serve distinct groups of customers and need each other in some way. They provide these customers a real or virtual meeting place, and they facilitate the interactions between members of these customer groups. They essentially act as intermediaries between the two...

This article shows that the Supreme Court reached the right outcome in Ohio et al. v. American Express. The District Court had found that American Express was a two-sided transaction platform that provided joint services simultaneously to cardholders and merchants. But it then chose, by adopting...

The attention market involves competition in which platforms acquire time from consumers, with bundles of content and ads, and sell ads to marketers to deliver messages during that time. This paper shows that the attention market solves a transaction-cost problem that prevents efficient exchange...