Over the period 2015-2017, the five giant technologically leading firms, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft (GAFAM) acquired 175 companies, from small start-ups to billion dollar deals. By investigating this intense M&A, this paper ambitions a better understanding of the Big Five's...

We identify an important feature of current digital governance systems: "third-party funded digital barter": consumers of digital services get many digital services for free (or underpriced) and in return have personal information about themselves collected for free. In addition, the digital...

Tracking online user behavior is essential for targeted advertising and is at the heart of the business model of major online platforms. We analyze tracker-specific web browsing data to show how the prediction quality of consumer profiles varies with data size and scope. We find decreasing...

This paper examines the impact of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on consumer behavior, focusing on changes in Google's search result presentation in the European Union (EU). Specifically, it investigates the effects of Google's removal of clickable maps in search results, a modification...

This paper presents a broad retrospective evaluation of mergers and merger decisions in the digital sector. We first discuss the most crucial features of digital markets such as network effects, multi-sidedness, big data, and rapid innovation that create important challenges for competition...

In this paper, we consider two platforms that compete for the development of a new product to integrate into their ecosystems. The new product can be developed either inhouse by the platforms or by an independent startup active only in the technology market. The presence of the startup affects...

Taxing consumption in the digital economy poses unique challenges for fiscal authorities. Recent institutional reforms, such as states changing remittance rules for the sales and use tax following the Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, were enacted in order to increase tax...

In 2018, the European Council and the UK and Spanish governments each proposed to introduce a Digital Services Tax (DST), to be levied on the revenue of large digital platforms from advertising, online intermediation, and/or the transmission of data. We offer a rationalization of the DST as a...

The use of digital services is largely non-rival. This paper argues that vanishing marginal costs of supply change policy incentives. Small countries are incentivized to tax the import of digital services. In fact, various countries have already moved towards expanded source taxation of online...

Many cartels are formed by individual managers of different firms, but not by firms as collectives. However, most of the literature in industrial economics neglects individuals' incentives to form cartels. Although oligopoly experiments reveal important insights on individuals acting as firms,...