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Trade policy with FANG's (aka trade policy and multi-sided platforms)

Phillip McCalman

Journal of International Economics, 2022, vol. 138, issue C

Abstract: The recent and rapid rise to prominence of the big-tech firms, collectively known as FANG's, owes much to their multi-sided approach. As economic activity shifts toward these business models, trade-agreements are being extended to ensure free trade in platform based products, guided by the logic and practice familiar from standard models (one-sided markets). Does this prescription automatically carry over to two-sided markets? We show that a world with FANG's can look and behave very differently from the more familiar one-sided setting, it's even possible for tariffs to lower prices, raise consumption and increase global welfare; the opposite of the one-sided result. We empirically explore the conditions for such outcomes and show they arise for a set of products recently added to the WTO's ITA, raising the possibility that policy errors are creeping into international-agreements from following one-sided logic in an increasingly two-sided world.

Keywords: Trade policy; Trade agreements; WTO; Platforms; Two-sided markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:inecon:v:138:y:2022:i:c:s0022199622000873

DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2022.103655

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