Two-sided market definition: some common misunderstandings

Gunnar Niels and Helen Ralston

European Competition Journal, 2021, vol. 17, issue 1, 118-133

Abstract: Market definition remains an important step in competition cases. The European Commission is in the process of updating its 1997 Market Definition Notice. One hotly debated topic is defining markets for two-sided platforms. In this article we address some of the main questions and misunderstandings about two-sided market definition, We discuss how the hypothetical monopolist test and critical loss analysis apply to two-sided platforms, and address questions such as: Should there be one market for the platform, or two markets (one for each side)? Is there a distinction in market definition between transaction and non-transaction platforms? What if the externalities flow in only one direction? What if the price is zero on one side of the platform? And can the market include non-platform competitors?

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17441056.2020.1851478 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recjxx:v:17:y:2021:i:1:p:118-133

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recj20

DOI: 10.1080/17441056.2020.1851478

Access Statistics for this article

European Competition Journal is currently edited by Philip Marsden

More articles in European Competition Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().