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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Digital platforms are at the heart of online economic activity, connecting multi-sided markets of producers and consumers of various goods and services. Their market power and their privileged ecosystem positions raise concerns that they may engage in anti-competitive practices that reduce...

Digital platforms are at the heart of online economic activity, connecting multi-sided markets of producers and consumers of various goods and services. Their market power, in combination with their privileged ecosystem position, raises concerns that they may engage in anti-competitive practices...

Should internet era merger policy differ from industrial era merger policy? Platform ecosystems rely on economies of scale, data-driven economies of scope, high-quality algorithmic systems, and strong network effects that frequently promote winner-take-most markets. Their market dominance has...