Randomization as an Antitrust Remedy

Abstract

The rise of big tech firms has steered contemporary antitrust policy debates toward concerns about leveraging and refusal to deal by digital platforms. Recent unilateral conduct cases and new legislative proposals for ex ante regulation target platforms that favor their own services over those of rivals, use defaults to potentially foreclose competition, or refuse to provide access to critical inputs. While a growing strand of academic literature focuses on the substantive legal and economic aspects of such strategies, relatively little attention has been placed on the design of effective remedies and potential regulatory solutions to these controversial problems. This article explores the use of randomization-based mechanisms in the design of regulation and antitrust remedies related to platform competition. Contrary to the assumption commonly endorsed in the literature, this article seeks to demonstrate that platform bottlenecks such as digital rankings, inventories, and space in digital ‘real estate’ are characterized by lower scarcity constraints than physical inputs or infrastructure, thereby revealing their untapped shareability potential. This under-appreciated economic characteristic serves as a foundation and rationale for the investigation of randomization as an extended version of choice screen ballots or as a form of non-discriminatory access to digital bottlenecks. Through this analysis, the paper underscores the importance of a clear policy objective underlying non-discriminatory access obligations and the design of antitrust remedies in unilateral conduct cases.

Keywords: antitrust, big tech, regulation, remedies, monopolization, essential facilities, refusal to deal

JEL Classification: K21, L10, L12, L40, L41, L43