This paper analyzes downstream merchant price coherence when upstream platforms are vertically differentiated. When merchants are unable to charge different prices to consumers who purchase their product using different platforms, fee competition among platforms becomes more intense. We show...

We investigate private and social incentives for standardization to ensure market-wide system compatibility in a two-dimensional spatial competition model. We develop a new methodology to analyze competition on a torus and show that there is a fundamental conflict of interest between consumers...