Substituting away? The effect of platform bargaining regulation on content display

Marita Freimane

No 772000, Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven

Abstract: In response to growing platform market power, governments seek ways to strengthen the bargaining position of content providers and other suppliers of platforms. Due to information asymmetries between platforms and regulators, top-down interventions— such as mandated transaction prices— are difficult to implement. This paper examines the effects of a bottom-up, bargaining-based regulatory alternative: Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The Code mandates that platforms negotiate payments for content with domestic publishers, backed by final-offer arbitration. Using a difference-in-differences design and granular data from Google News, I show that the Code significantly altered the composition of news content. In particular, the share of content from large foreign publishers increased, while that of major domestic publishers declined—consistent with changes in the relative cost of displaying different types of content.

Keywords: platform regulation; news aggregators; bargaining power; news media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2025-09-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-reg
Note: paper number MSI_2506
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Published in FEB Research Report MSI_2506, pages 1-29

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