Online media platforms have the characteristics of a particular type of market known as ‘multi-sided’. These businesses create value by bringing advertisers and users together. Access to user data is critical to this process. On the basis of economic literature, the features of multi-sided...

In two-sided markets a platform allows consumers and sellers to interact by creating sub-markets within the platform marketplace. For example, Amazon has sub-markets for all of the different product categories available on its site, and smartphones have sub-markets for different types of...

Following the Internet's widespread adoption, much economic work has studied ‘online platforms': firms that mainly interact with consumers in cyberspace. This article surveys such work, focusing on the ways in which traditional economic models have been adapted to incorporate novel aspects...

Most digital content distributed in information-goods platforms encounter the threat of online piracy. Strategic pricing, technology-based platform protection, and deterrent enforcement such as legal and moral measures are viewed as antidotes to piracy. We examine the effects of deterrent...