Price Parity Clauses on Internet Platform Markets PDF Download

Author: Holger Löhr
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668257450
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Economics - Other, grade: 1,7, University of Marburg (Wirtschaftspolitik), course: Masterarbeit, language: English, abstract: Recent years have witnessed a remarkable increase in internet platform markets which have become the preferred venue of interaction amongst a growing number of buyers and sellers. The ability of the internet to enable sellers reach a greater number of consumers shows that there is a high potential for growth of the internet market, with effects on competition. Following a 2013 report by the German Antitrust Authority “Bundeskartellamt” on “Vertical Restraints on the Internet Economy”, it is clear that the internet significantly reduces transaction costs and thus increases competition to the benefit of consumers. The increase in competition among sellers, producers and retailers has led to an adoption of different forms of vertical restrictions on internet platforms which have come under the scrutiny of antitrust authorities. This thesis aims to analyze vertical restraints on internet platform markets based on the investigation of Amazon.com, Inc. by the “Bundeskartellamt” for its use of a price parity clause. This clause was introduced in Germany and in the United Kingdom in 2010 in the contract between Amazon and sellers using its platform and prohibited them from setting lower prices on other platforms, including their own websites, than the prices they set on Amazon.

Author: Renato Gomes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic commerce
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Online marketplaces, such as Amazon, or online travel agencies, such as Booking.com, greatly expand consumer information about market offers, but also raise firms' marginal costs by charging high commissions. To prevent show-rooming, platforms adopted price parity clauses, which restrict sellers' ability to offer lower prices in alternative sales channels. Whether to uphold, reform, or ban price parity has been at the center of the policy debate, but so far little consensus has emerged. In this paper, we investigate a natural alternative to lifting price parity; namely, we study how to optimally cap platforms' commissions. The optimal cap reflects the Pigouvian precept according to which the platform should not charge fees greater than the externality that its presence generates on other market participants. Employing techniques from extreme-value theory, we are able to express the optimal cap in terms of observable quantities. In an application to online travel agencies, we find that current average fees are welfare increasing only if platforms at least double consumers' consideration sets (relative to alternative ways of gathering information online). This suggests that, in some markets, regulation capping commissions should bind if optimally set.

Author: Bruce Kilpatrick
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303107422X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
This book gathers contributions from a broad range of jurisdictions, written by practitioners and academics alike, and offers an unparalleled comparative view of key issues in competition law, intellectual property and unfair competition law, with a specific focus on the use of personal data. The first part focuses on the role of competition law in shaping the digital economy. It discusses the use of personal data, the market power of platforms, the assessment of free services, and more broadly the responsibility of dominant companies in the smooth functioning of the digital economy. In turn, the second part sheds light on how the conduct of influencers, native advertising and the use of AI for marketing purposes can be controlled by the law, focusing on the use of personal data and the impact of behavioral advertising on consumers. In this regard, the book brings together the current legal responses across a number of European and other countries, all summarized and elaborated on in the form of two international reports. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues.

Author: Joan Calzada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
We investigate how the adoption of price parity clauses (PPCs) by established platforms affects the listing decisions of suppliers. PPCs have been widely adopted by online travel agencies (OTAs) to force client hotels not to charge lower prices in alternative sales channels. We find that OTAs adopt PPCs when they are perceived as highly substitutable, and in order to prevent showrooming. PPCs allow OTAs to charge hotels higher commission fees. However, hotels can respond by delisting themselves from some OTAs. Hence, our analysis reveals that the removal of PPCs enables more hotels to resort to OTAs. This is beneficial for consumers, as prices decrease in absence of PPCs.

Author: Chengsi Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Platforms use price parity clauses to prevent sellers charging lower prices when selling through other channels. Platforms justify these restraints by noting they are needed to prevent free-riding, which would undermine their incentives to invest in their platform. In this paper, we study the effect of price parity clauses on three different types of platform investment, and evaluate these restraints taking into account these investment effects. We find, that wide price parity clauses lead to excessive platform investment while without such price parity clauses there is insufficient platform investment. Even taking these investment effects into account, wide price parity clauses always lower consumer surplus and often lowers total welfare.

Author: Gintarė Surblytė
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3642550967
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Undeniably widespread and powerful as it is, the Internet is not almighty: it can reach as high as the skies (cloud computing), but it cannot escape competition. Yet, safeguarding competition in “the network of networks” is not without challenges: not only are competitive processes in platform-based industries complex, so is competition law analysis. The latter is often challenged by the difficulties in predicting the outcome of competition, in particular in terms of innovation. Do the specific competition law issues in a digital environment presuppose a reconsideration of competition law concepts and their application? Can current competition law tools be adjusted to the rush pace of dynamic industries? To what extent could competition law be supplemented by regulation – is the latter a foe or rather an ally? This book provides an analysis of recent developments in the most relevant competition law cases in a digital environment on both sides of the Atlantic (the EU and the US) and assesses platform competition issues from a legal as well as an economic point of view.

Author: Jens-Uwe Franck
Publisher: Centre on Regulation in Europe asbl (CERRE)
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
With the rise of digital platforms and the natural tendency of markets involving platforms to become concentrated, competition authorities and courts are more frequently in a position to investigate and decide merger and abuse cases that involve platforms. This report provides guidance on how to define markets and on how to assess market power when dealing with two-sided platforms. DEFINITION Competition authorities and courts are well advised to uniformly use a multi-markets approach when defining markets in the context of two-sided platforms. The multi-markets approach is the more flexible instrument compared to the competing single-market approach that defines a single market for both sides of a platform, as the former naturally accounts for different substitution possibilities by the user groups on the two sides of the platform. While one might think of conditions under which a single-market approach could be feasible, the necessary conditions are so severe that it would only be applicable under rare circumstances. To fully appreciate business activities in platform markets from a competition law point of view, and to do justice to competition law’s purpose, which is to protect consumer welfare, the legal concept of a “market” should not be interpreted as requiring a price to be paid by one party to the other. It is not sufficient to consider the activities on the “unpaid side” of the platform only indirectly by way of including them in the competition law analysis of the “paid side” of the platform. Such an approach would exclude certain activities and ensuing positive or negative effects on consumer welfare altogether from the radar of competition law. Instead, competition practice should recognize straightforwardly that there can be “markets” for products offered free of charge, i.e. without monetary consideration by those who receive the product. ASSESSMENT The application of competition law often requires an assessment of market power. Using market shares as indicators of market power, in addition to all the difficulties in standard markets, raises further issues for two-sided platforms. When calculating revenue shares, the only reasonable option is to use the sum of revenues on all sides of the platform. Then, such shares should not be interpreted as market shares as they are aggregated over two interdependent markets. Large revenue shares appear to be a meaningful indicator of market power if all undertakings under consideration serve the same sides. However, they are often not meaningful if undertakings active in the relevant markets follow different business models. Given potentially strong cross-group external effects, market shares are less apt in the context of two-sided platforms to indicate market power (or the lack of it). Barriers to entry are at the core of persistent market power and, thus, the entrenchment of incumbent platforms. They deserve careful examination by competition authorities. Barriers to entry may arise due to users’ coordination failure in the presence of network effect. On two-sided platforms, users on both sides of the market have to coordinate their expectations. Barriers to entry are more likely to be present if an industry does not attract new users and if it does not undergo major technological change. Switching costs and network effects may go hand in hand: consumer switching costs sometimes depend on the number of platform users and, in this case, barriers to entry from consumer switching costs increase with platform size. Since market power is related to barriers to entry, the absence of entry attempts may be seen as an indication of market power. However, entry threats may arise from firms offering quite different services, as long as they provide a new home for users’ attention and needs.

Author: Bruce Kilpatrick
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319714198
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
This book gathers international and national reports from across the globe on key questions in the field of antitrust and intellectual property. The first part discusses the application of competition law to online sales platforms, which is increasingly a focus for anti-trust authorities around the world. A detailed international report explores which are the major challenges for competition law generated by the growth of online platforms. It provides an excellent comparative study of this complex and challenging subject. The second part of the book gathers contributions from various jurisdictions on the topic “To what extent do current exclusions and limitations to copyright strike a fair balance between the rights of owners and fair use by private individuals and others ?" This section presents an international report, which offers an unparalleled comparative analysis of this topic, bringing together common themes and contrasting the various national provisions dealing with exceptions to copyright, amongst other things. The book also includes the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) following a debate on each of these topics, which include proposed solutions and recommendations. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues.

Author: Francesco Ducci
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108870007
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Competition policy debates on digital platform markets are often premised on the idea that market fragmentation and the standard forces of competition and entry may provide a potential solution to excessive concentration and market power. In this work, Francesco Ducci provides readers with a different perspective based on the theoretical lens of natural monopoly. Ducci explores this framework through the development of three case studies on horizontal search, e-commerce marketplaces, and ride-hailing platforms, investigating the strength and limit of potential (and often heterogeneous) sources of natural monopoly at play in each industry. Building on these case studies, the book then derives from the application of the natural monopoly framework general policy implications for digital industries by identifying the respective institutional flaws and shortcomings of ex ante and ex post approaches to market power as one of the central challenges in digital platform markets.

Author: Anna Olimpia
Publisher: Editora Singular
ISBN: 6586352959
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
The proliferation of economic agents with market power, especially those operating in the digital economy and which add unprecedented dynamic and complexity to it, has sparked heated discussions among academics, professionals, and competition authorities around the world regarding the effects of their actions on the market and consumers. Unlike classic cartels – a conduct that has been treated as per se unlawful in Brazil, regardless of the production of effects under Brazilian competition law – unilateral conduct falls into a gray area, encompassing different practices with different effects on the market. In this sense, examples of unilateral conduct that may be considered anticompetitive are numerous, both under old and new labels: predatory pricing, abusive pricing, resale price maintenance, imposition of exclusivities, parity clauses, price discrimination, discrimination of commercial conditions (self-preferencing), price squeeze, refusal to deal, among others. The competition analysis of such conduct – which may occur in traditional "brick and mortar" markets as well as in digital environments involving various platforms and arrangements like blockchain – for the purpose of a decision by the authority on whether they constitute anticompetitive practices or not, involves a highly complex analysis of various factors. The analysis must consider the presence of dominant positions, real or potential detrimental effects on competition, efficiencies, justifications, economic rationale for the conduct, and, for some schools of thought, a weighing of anticompetitive effects and efficiencies. Due to the complexity, specificities, and dynamism of unilateral practices, especially in digital markets or hybrid digital platforms, there is a question of whether the instruments currently available to competition authorities are sufficient to understand and rule on such practices. In this regard, the analysis of various cases in relatively recent jurisprudence shows a pursuit for new forms of interpretation and application, and even updates, to the methodologies of analysis and of applicable legislation, in order to strike a balance between intervention to curb anticompetitive practices to the extent necessary for protecting competition, without resulting on undue interference in the involved markets or on disincentives to innovation. Historically, discussions about exclusivity clauses and resale price maintenance have been central in this type of investigation, but digital platforms are effectively changing this landscape, giving rise to discussions on new types of conduct or more sophisticated forms of implementing traditional types of conduct, which have become possible or potentially more serious through new technologies, the broad reach of platforms, the collection of massive data, and the international nature of the largest players in these markets. Notions of relevant market, theories of harm, and standards of consumer welfare or protection traditionally adopted by antitrust authorities are under study and may be revised. The heterogeneity of legal systems in different jurisdictions is another complicating factor for national authorities in the analysis of conduct practiced by companies with market power internationally. All these analyses are present in the 25 articles written for this publication by IBRAC. We have articles focused on traditional methods of analysis in traditional markets, as well as articles addressing new trends and recent discussions in digital markets and platforms. In times of pandemic and economic crisis, as expected, approaches to prices and pricing strategies are recurring themes in the works compiled here.