Essays on the Economics of Two-Sided Markets: Economics, Antitrust and Strategy

Abstract

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.

Keywords: two-sided markets, platforms, market definition, antitrust, internet, web-economy, digital media, software platforms, payments, operating systems, critical mass, ignition strategies