Progetti di ricerca

The aggregative role of platforms is often seen as the bright side of the digital era. Big Tech firms such as Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, have undoubtedly brought users great convenience in the form of an ever-increasing array of… Leggi tutto services provided by themselves and by a set of co-specialized ecosystem participants. Yet, the presence of network externalities typically favors the emergence of dominant focal networks, many of which are currently under antitrust scrutiny. Notably, pressured by the international public opinion, several political bodies are concerned with various forms of potential big-platform misbehavior. The trade-off between these opposite forces poses new intellectual challenges for policymakers wishing to update their policy guidelines. Can they safely make competition policy decisions based on traditional and consolidated presumptions when regulating digital markets? If not, why? What are the risks associated with a too-conservative attitude? What are the potential drawbacks of a too lenient approach? And how can they be overcome? In our view, such challenges can only be properly tackled if policymakers are guided by economic theory. Making a step forward in this direction is our primary objective. Our research proposal has several interconnected, positive and normative goals. At the nexus of these goals stand platforms’ market power and the potential channels through which these companies can exert their gatekeeper power at the expense of rivals and consumers. In particular, the scientific objectives, the expected outcomes, and the potential returns for policy evaluation of each team are the following: The research unit of the University of Bergamo will specialize its research activity on the welfare effects of control changes (vertical and horizontal mergers) in platform markets, and will investigate the factors that make these mergers more or less anticompetitive, or even pro-competitive. The research unit of the Bicocca University will focus on anticompetitive practices and study the link between these tactics and platforms’ business models (in particular, hybrid platforms). These researchers will also investigate the effects of platform competition and the possible use of alternative remedies. The research units of the University of Florence and Bologna will work in strict collaboration to implement the empirical part of the project. A primary objective of these researchers is to put together a new and detailed dataset to investigate the determinants (e.g., network effects and propensity to multi-home) of demand in two-sided markets, using a structural econometrics approach, and then use these estimates to calibrate the theories of harm developed by the other units. Achieving these goals will advance the current understanding of digital markets' dynamics and will also deliver normative insights that can be tested, thereby helping policymakers updating merger guidelines and codes of conduct in digital markets.