Essays on Platform Competition and Two-sided Markets

Essays on Platform Competition and Two-sided Markets PDF Author: Robin Seung-Jin Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This dissertation comprises three essays on the industrial organization of platform and two-sided markets. In these networked industries, agents on one side of the market adopt, join, or visit a platform intermediary in order to access goods or services provided by agents on another side of the market. All three essays focus on environments where one side of the market consists of a small number of strategic firms, and analyze competition among platforms to get members of this oligopolistic side "on-board." The first essay provides a model of platform competition for symmetric firms that allows for general externalities across both contracting and non-contracting partners, and addresses the question of when a market will sustain a single or multiple platforms. When firms and consumers can join only one platform, the essay provide conditions under which market-tipping and market-splitting equilibria may exist, and illustrates how either outcome may still be inefficient despite the presence of contingent contracts.

Essays on Platform Competition and Two-sided Markets

Essays on Platform Competition and Two-sided Markets PDF Author: Robin Seung-Jin Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This dissertation comprises three essays on the industrial organization of platform and two-sided markets. In these networked industries, agents on one side of the market adopt, join, or visit a platform intermediary in order to access goods or services provided by agents on another side of the market. All three essays focus on environments where one side of the market consists of a small number of strategic firms, and analyze competition among platforms to get members of this oligopolistic side "on-board." The first essay provides a model of platform competition for symmetric firms that allows for general externalities across both contracting and non-contracting partners, and addresses the question of when a market will sustain a single or multiple platforms. When firms and consumers can join only one platform, the essay provide conditions under which market-tipping and market-splitting equilibria may exist, and illustrates how either outcome may still be inefficient despite the presence of contingent contracts.

Essays on Platforms and Two-sided Markets

Essays on Platforms and Two-sided Markets PDF Author: Mark Joseph Tremblay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781339627014
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 95

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Book Description


Essays on the Economics of Two-Sided Markets

Essays on the Economics of Two-Sided Markets PDF Author: David S. Evans
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume collects a series of essays that I have written over the last decade on businesses that create value by providing products that enable two or more different types of customers to get together, find each other, and exchange value. Part I presents background pieces on the economics of multi-sided platforms and industries in which these platforms are common. Part II examines the antitrust economics of two-sided markets including defining the difficult problem of defining the boundaries of competition. Part III comprises several papers that apply two-sided market analysis to web-based businesses. Part IV does the same for payment cards which is the industry that attracted much of the early two-sided analysis - in part because this framework was helpful for understanding the hotly debated issue of interchange fees. Part V collects several article and book chapters on software platforms. These platforms have become especially important in the last several years because they are now the basis for revolutionary developments with mobile devices (e.g. the iPhone and Android), social networking (Facebook in particular), and payments (PayPalX). The essays are published as originally written (usually, in fact, whatever version could be made freely available). The book itself consists of a series of urls (website addresses) that enable the reader to download these papers.

Platform Economics

Platform Economics PDF Author: David S. Evans
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
This volume collects a series of essays that I have written over the last decade on multi-sided platform businesses that create value by providing products that enable two or more different types of customers to get together, find each other, and exchange value. Part I presents background pieces on the economics of multi-sided platforms and industries in which these platforms are common. Part II examines the antitrust economics of two-sided markets including the difficult problem of defining the boundaries of competition. Part III comprises several papers that apply two-sided market analysis to web-based businesses. Part IV does the same for payment cards which is the industry that attracted much of the early two-sided analysis -- in part because this framework was helpful for understanding the hotly debated issue of interchange fees. Part V collects several article and book chapters on software platforms. These platforms have become especially important in the last several years because they are now the basis for revolutionary developments with mobile devices (e.g. the iPhone and Android), social networking (Facebook in particular), and payments (PayPalX).

Understanding Online Two-sided Market

Understanding Online Two-sided Market PDF Author: Jinyang Zheng
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
This dissertation provides a comprehensive investigation of online two-sided markets from empirical perspective. The four essays included propose research questions from four different angles and answer those questions by using four correspondingly matched empirical setups. In essay 1, we study the adoption of online two-sided market by investigating how two-sided sales promotion affects drivers’ willingness to use the TNC app and how the TNC develops its optimal promotion strategies accordingly. We find that the substantial value of early promotion not only encourages current usage but also fosters learning that sustains drivers’ use of the app afterward. The results also show that revealed tips from passengers signal low quality of service and that platform cashback to passengers has a positive effect on drivers by increasing drivers’ chances of being rewarded. In essay 2, we investigate the information asymmetry problem of online two-sided market by measuring the effect of platform endorsements and consumer-generated reputation on demand in the online service marketplace and the effect of a “conform or be cast out” policy that is applied by the platform to ensure that sellers have platform refund insurance on the platform-wide quality and competency. We find that individuals have relatively consistent sensitivity to consumer-generated reputation, but different perceptions of platform endorsements, some of which could have a negative effect on demand. Regarding the “conform or be cast out” policy, we find that, even though casting-out reduces the variety of sellers and, thus, decreases platform-wide demand and consumer welfare, the negative effect is offset by sellers’ having platform refund insurance. In essay 3, we study the social influence of online two-sided market by investigating how a review-in-review (RIR) affects rating behavior. We find measurable evidence that individuals rate, in part, to satisfy their expectation of gaining social capital. The average rater weights social capital gain at approximately 20%. In essay 4, we examined the role of the mega player in the online two-sided market by estimating the spillover effects of WeChat on the other top-50 most frequently used apps in China. We find that the spillover effects of WeChat are limited; in fact, only two other only two other apps, Tencent News and Taobao, receive positive spillover effects from WeChat.

Essays on Market Structure

Essays on Market Structure PDF Author: Feng Ruan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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Book Description


Market definition and market power in the platform economy

Market definition and market power in the platform economy PDF Author: Jens-Uwe Franck
Publisher: Centre on Regulation in Europe asbl (CERRE)
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
With the rise of digital platforms and the natural tendency of markets involving platforms to become concentrated, competition authorities and courts are more frequently in a position to investigate and decide merger and abuse cases that involve platforms. This report provides guidance on how to define markets and on how to assess market power when dealing with two-sided platforms. DEFINITION Competition authorities and courts are well advised to uniformly use a multi-markets approach when defining markets in the context of two-sided platforms. The multi-markets approach is the more flexible instrument compared to the competing single-market approach that defines a single market for both sides of a platform, as the former naturally accounts for different substitution possibilities by the user groups on the two sides of the platform. While one might think of conditions under which a single-market approach could be feasible, the necessary conditions are so severe that it would only be applicable under rare circumstances. To fully appreciate business activities in platform markets from a competition law point of view, and to do justice to competition law’s purpose, which is to protect consumer welfare, the legal concept of a “market” should not be interpreted as requiring a price to be paid by one party to the other. It is not sufficient to consider the activities on the “unpaid side” of the platform only indirectly by way of including them in the competition law analysis of the “paid side” of the platform. Such an approach would exclude certain activities and ensuing positive or negative effects on consumer welfare altogether from the radar of competition law. Instead, competition practice should recognize straightforwardly that there can be “markets” for products offered free of charge, i.e. without monetary consideration by those who receive the product. ASSESSMENT The application of competition law often requires an assessment of market power. Using market shares as indicators of market power, in addition to all the difficulties in standard markets, raises further issues for two-sided platforms. When calculating revenue shares, the only reasonable option is to use the sum of revenues on all sides of the platform. Then, such shares should not be interpreted as market shares as they are aggregated over two interdependent markets. Large revenue shares appear to be a meaningful indicator of market power if all undertakings under consideration serve the same sides. However, they are often not meaningful if undertakings active in the relevant markets follow different business models. Given potentially strong cross-group external effects, market shares are less apt in the context of two-sided platforms to indicate market power (or the lack of it). Barriers to entry are at the core of persistent market power and, thus, the entrenchment of incumbent platforms. They deserve careful examination by competition authorities. Barriers to entry may arise due to users’ coordination failure in the presence of network effect. On two-sided platforms, users on both sides of the market have to coordinate their expectations. Barriers to entry are more likely to be present if an industry does not attract new users and if it does not undergo major technological change. Switching costs and network effects may go hand in hand: consumer switching costs sometimes depend on the number of platform users and, in this case, barriers to entry from consumer switching costs increase with platform size. Since market power is related to barriers to entry, the absence of entry attempts may be seen as an indication of market power. However, entry threats may arise from firms offering quite different services, as long as they provide a new home for users’ attention and needs.

Essays in Two-sided Markets with Intermediaries

Essays in Two-sided Markets with Intermediaries PDF Author: Jing Xu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this thesis, I study the two-sided marketplaces with intermediaries that can facilitate matching, search and trades. The first chapter considers the welfare and distributional consequences of introducing the student-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism in a model where schools have exogenous qualities and the benefit from attending a school is supermodular in school quality and student type. Unlike neighborhood assignment, deferred acceptance induces non-positive assortative matching where higher-type students do not necessarily choose neighborhoods with better schools. Student types are more heterogeneous within neighborhoods under deferred acceptance. Assuming an elastic housing supply, deferred acceptance benefits residents in lower-quality neighborhoods with more access to higher quality schools. Moreover, more parents will 'vote with their feet' for deferred acceptance, other things equal, than for neighborhood assignment. The second chapter studies a search platform in a setting where buyers search for sellers directly or through a platform with lower search costs, and the platform charges both sides for the transactions it facilitates. While many intermediaries attract as many users as possible by lowering search cost, potential buyers also care about how attractive the sellers available via the intermediary are, not just the number. A search platform's strategy is determined by the coexisting positive and negative cross-group externalities: (i) while buyers appreciate more choices of sellers available on the platform, (ii) increasing the number of available sellers makes the search for low-priced and high-value sellers harder due to an unfavorable price dispersion. A platform optimally adopts a threshold strategy of targeting sellers with lower costs to balance the competing externalities. The third chapter studies intermediation in a buyer-seller network with sequential bargaining. An intermediary matches traders connected in a network to bargain over the price of heterogeneous goods and has the freedom to charge each side commission. A profit-maximizing middleman can help eliminate trading delays but limits trade executed that are not surplus maximizing. When the middleman competes with the buyers and sellers being matched through an exogenous search process, she matches buyer and seller pairs that are selected less often by the exogenous search process.

The Antitrust Paradox

The Antitrust Paradox PDF Author: Robert Bork
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781736089712
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

Path Dependence in Two-sided Markets

Path Dependence in Two-sided Markets PDF Author: Tobias Georg Meyer
Publisher: Tobias Georg Meyer
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description