Platform Competition as Network Contestability

Robert Gilles () and Dimitrios Diamantaras
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Robert Gilles: Queen's University Management School, Belfast, UK

No 1303, DETU Working Papers from Department of Economics, Temple University

Abstract: Recent research in industrial organisation has investigated the essential place that middlemen have in the networks that make up our global economy. In this paper we attempt to understand how such middlemen compete with each other through a game theoretic analysis using novel techniques from decision-making under ambiguity. We model a purposely abstract and reduced model of one middleman who provides a two-sided platform, mediating surplus-creating interactions between two users. The middleman evaluates uncertain outcomes under positional ambiguity, taking into account the possibility of the emergence of an alternative middleman offering intermediary services to the two users. Surprisingly, we find many situations in which the middleman will purposely extract maximal gains from her position. Only if there is relatively low probability of devastating loss of business under competition, the middleman will adopt a more competitive attitude and extract less from her position.

Keywords: competition; middlemen; ambiguity; platform; two-sided market; market intermediation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D81 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-gth and nep-net
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.cla.temple.edu/RePEc/documents/DETU_13_03.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tem:wpaper:1303

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