Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments July 26, 2017 erstellt
Description:
Several economists have claimed that markets in which two-sided firms compete become one-sided at maturity, when everyone has joined a platform. That is, they assert that in mature markets policymakers, such as courts in antitrust cases, can properly exclude one side from consideration, even though both sides matter to the two-sided firms involved. One court—in U.S. Airways v. Sabre—has agreed. For the purposes of analyzing alleged anticompetitive practices by Sabre, which operates a Global Distribution Services (GDS) platform serving airlines and travel agents, the court allowed the jury to ignore the travel agent side of the platform. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering this matter. Our Amicus Brief explains why the mature market theory proposed by these economists, which is based on nothing more than assertion, is not consistent with the foundational papers on two-sided platforms, with the competitive realities faced by two-sided firms in mature markets, or with standard principles for defining relevant markets in antitrust cases