Supplement to Platform Economics: The Economics of Multi-Sided Businesses

Oct 16, 2013

I’ve written the following articles on multi-sided platforms since the publication of Platform Economics: Essays on Multi-Sided Businesses in December 2011. Hopefully, you’ll find them useful.

The first article, the “Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platforms,” provides a survey of the literature on multi-sided platforms that is relevant to competition policy through the end of 2012. The second article, “The Consensus Among Economists on Multi-Sided Platforms,” argues that courts and competition authorities should reject economic “evidence” that ignores the widely accepted teachings of the multi-sided literature. The other three articles cover different aspects of multi-sided platforms. “Governing Bad Behavior” is about the use of rules and regulations by platforms to govern their communities. “Economics of Vertical Restraints for Multi-Sided Platforms” examines the pro-competitive and anti-competitive explanations for vertical restraints for platforms. “Attention Rivalry Among On Line Platforms” shows how seemingly different online platforms compete for harvesting consumer attention and selling this to advertisers.

“The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses.” Roger Blair and Daniel Sokol, eds., Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, Oxford University Press, Forthcoming; University of Chicago Institute for Law & Economics Olin Research Paper No. 623. (With Richard Schmalensee.)

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