We are living through a transition from the industrial age to the information age. The parts of our economy related most closely to information and digital content may have been the first to feel the shift, but they will not be the last. The formative stories of the information age - the...

The recent Microsoft antitrust case had many profound implications, one of which was possible insight into the changing role of economics in antitrust. Microsoft started out as a "post-Chicago" theoretical case in which game theory and asymmetric information models suggested the software firm...

Recent and ongoing investments into telecommunications infrastructure have facilitated the repeated waves of digitization, both in personal and professional life. I address the question of which actors should contribute to investment costs into telecoms infrastructure and how. One widely...

Platforms acting as sales channels for producers often charge users for access, via a subscription fee or a markup on hardware. We compare two common forms of vertical pricing agreement that platforms use with sellers: per-­unit and proportional fees. In particular, we analyze the critical role...

When Apple entered the ebook market, prices rose. A recent court decision found Apple guilty of colluding with publishers, blaming the price hike, in part, on agency agreements and prohibiting their use. Building a model to compare these with traditional wholesale agreements, we identify a...

The digital transformation "revolutionizes" entire economies and societies. It can be interpreted as a Schumpeterian technological and economic revolution that fits well into his "Theory of Economic Development" written more than 100 years ago. This paper analyzes three current policy debates...

This article presents and analyses the results of a large-scale empirical study in which over 11,000 consumers from ten countries in five continents were surveyed about their use, perceptions and understanding of online platform services. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first...

Data is often at the core of digital products and services, especially when related to online advertising. This has made data protection and privacy a major policy concern. When surfing the web, consumers leave digital traces that can be used to build user profiles and infer preferences. We...

Data is often at the core of digital products and services, especially when related to online advertising. This has made data protection and privacy a major policy concern. When surfing the web, consumers leave digital traces that can be used to build user profiles and infer preferences. We...

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) initiative, which is set to introduce ex ante regulatory rules for “gatekeepers” in online platform markets, is one of the most important pieces of legislation to emanate from Brussels in recent decades. It not only has the potential to...