The article addresses the role market definition can play for EU competition practice in the platform economy. The focus is on intermediaries that bring together two (or more) groups of users whose decisions are interdependent and which therefore are commonly referred to as “two-sided...

An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level...

A new era is dawning for market definition under EU competition law. It is being rung in by five distinct developments that, together, foreshadow the future of the relevant market as a tool of competition law. A plethora of policy reports on digital markets have made recommendations for...

Competition law needs to be able to rely on its most fundamental analytical tools in order to properly carry out competitive assessments. This includes market definition as the first step in virtually any competition case. And this also holds true in digital markets. Market definition has risen...

Despite its vital role in the modern marketplace, attention has largely escaped the notice of the antitrust community. Existing discourse exhibits a variety of misconceptions and flawed prescriptions. One example is the widely held notion that attention markets necessitate two-sided platform...

Event studies are an analytical tool used in a wide range of circumstances to empirically assess the economic or financial impact of unexpected events or the release of new information. This article briefly describes their use in analyzing natural experiments to inform geographic market...

Die Theorie mehrseitiger Marktplätze hat sich seit den ersten Arbeiten von Rochet/Tirole (2003), Evans (2003) und Evans/Schmalensee (2007) und ihrer Übertragung auf Medienmärkte durch Dewenter (2006) und Dewenter/Haucap (2009) zur Analyse von Plattformmärkten im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs...

In Europe, the ongoing renewable expansion and delays in the planned grid extension have intensified the discussion about an adequate electricity market design. Against this background, we jointly apply an agent-based electricity market model and an optimal power flow model to investigate the...

Telecom companies are a frequent target of antitrust investigations in Russia. In an industry where services tend to become more and more complex and companies actively invest in diversifying their businesses, the antitrust authority in most of its telecom cases has chosen to define markets...

Despite all the commentary that the topic has attracted in recent years, confusion still surrounds the proper definition of relevant markets in antitrust. This paper addresses that confusion and attempts to explain the underlying logic of market definition. It does so largely by way of...

This article presents a novel method of market delineation, which generates virtually isolated residential clusters using data on the spatial distribution of population. The performance of this approach is evaluated by contrasting it with traditional delineation techniques based on municipal...

Collaborative standardisation and SEP Licensing: a EU policy perspective / G. Bruzzone & S. Capozzi -- Economic considerations on mergers, IPR licensing and litigation : A EU perspective / C. Caffarra & P. Régibeau -- Alternative dispute resolution in FRAND licensing : economic considerations...

When it comes to market definition in two-sided markets, an idea that has gained traction — among academics, competition authorities and even the US Supreme Court — is the distinction between transaction and non-transaction platforms. However, this distinction has no theoretical underpinning...

A new era is dawning for market definition under EU competition law. It is being rung in by five distinct developments that, together, foreshadow the future of the relevant market as a tool of competition law. A plethora of policy reports on digital markets have made recommendations for...

Because market definition is frequently outcome determinative, it is both a central and contested part of antitrust litigation. Recognition of business methods known as multisided platforms presents the challenge of whether and how to incorporate their characteristically interconnected groups...

Considering the digital economy and the constant changes imposed by technological innovation, the definition of the relevant market of Big Data allows to understand the market structure and related issues to competition as mergers and acquisitions, market power, verticalization, abuse of...

In this paper, we aim to investigate whether different segments of beer products can constitute a separate relevant product market within the framework of competition law. This question gained importance when the merger between Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller became subject to a Phase II...

When the theory of two-sided markets was first introduced it was common to hear a theory of everything, and therefore nothing, since everything seems to be two-sided. One of the problems with two-sided market analysis is that is hard to find formal limiting principles to market definition since...

Market delineation is a fundamental tool in modern antitrust analysis. However, the definition of relevant markets can be very difficult in practice. This preliminary draft applies a new methodology combining a simple price correlation test with hierarchical clustering -a method known from...

"In recent years, market definition has come under attack as an analytical tool of competition law. Scholars have increasingly questioned its usefulness and feasibility. That criticism comes into sharper relief in dynamic, innovation-driven markets, which do not correspond to the static markets...

In this short and mainly expository article, we explain the “hypothetical monopolist test” that has become the standard methodology for identifying relevant antitrust markets in merger cases, and discuss two approaches to implementing the test. We then focus on the implementation of the test...

The conventional method of defining the relevant product and geographic market was undoubtedly in the foreground of the practice of the European Commission. Since a few years we can see new approaches coming which are less based on the current practice than on economic theories, and in...

The accuracy and outcome of the market definition process can substantially alter the assessment of the Commission of a particular merger since the degree of competition in a market crucially depends on how the boundaries of the market in product and geographical terms determine the presence and...

OTT-messenger such as facebook, WhatsApp have gained wide popularity among mobile users while traffic of text messaging has been in strong decline in several countries. This work is the first to provide an empirical analysis how consumption of OTT-messengers affects demand for text messaging and...

Platform markets are characterized by the existence of indirect network effects that connect two or more market sides through a platform that internalizes these feedback effects. Conventional instruments of market definitions which consider price levels cannot easily applied in case of two-sided...

OTT-messenger such as facebook, WhatsApp have gained wide popularity among mobile users while traffic of text messaging has been in strong decline in several countries. This work is the first to provide an empirical analysis how consumption of OTT-messengers affects demand for text messaging and...

With the emergence of data as an asset for market players operating in the digital economy, questions have risen about the relevance of data for competition enforcement. This article focuses on the role of data in the competitive process between online platforms including search engines, social...

Developments in the EU telecommunications markets require a recurrent redesign of the regulatory framework for telecommunications services. In this regard, the analysis of the substitution effects between different types of telephony is the cornerstone of market definition and therefore of...

Market definition and market power are central features of competition law and practice but pose serious challenges. On one hand, market definition suffers decisive logical infirmities that render it infeasible, unnecessary, and counterproductive, and the practice of stating market power...