scholarly journals Big data: Hell or heaven? Digital platforms and market power in the data-driven economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Nuccio ◽  
Marco Guerzoni

Digital transformation has triggered a process of concentration in several markets for information goods with digital platforms rising to dominate key industries by leveraging on network externalities and economies of scale in the use of consumer data. The policy debate, therefore, focuses on the market control allegedly held by incumbents who build their competitive advantage on big data. In this paper, we evaluate the risk of abuse of a dominant position by analysing three major aspects highlighted in economic theory: entry barriers, price discrimination, and potential for technological improvement. Drawing on industrial and information economics, we argue that the very nature of big data, on the one hand, prompts market concentration and, on the other, limits the possibility of abuse. This claim is not an a-priori apologia of large incumbents in digital markets, but rather an attempt to argue that market concentration is not necessarily detrimental when it stimulates continuous innovation. Nonetheless, the concentration of power in a few global players should raise other concerns linked with the supranational nature of these firms, which can easily cherry-pick locations to exploit tax competition among countries or more favourable privacy legislation and the fair use of data.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hemant K. Bhargava

Many digital platforms give users a bundle of goods sourced from numerous creators, generate revenue through consumption of these goods, and motivate creators by sharing of revenue. This paper studies the platform’s design choices and creators’ participation and supply decisions when users’ (viewers’) consumption of goods (content) is financed by third-party advertisers. The model specifies the platform’s scale: number of creators and content supplied and magnitudes of viewers, advertisers, and revenues. I examine how the distribution of creator capabilities affects market concentration among creators and how it can be influenced by platform design. Tools for ad management and analytics are more impactful when the platform has sufficient content and viewers but has low ad demand. Conversely, reducing viewers’ distaste for ads through better matching and timing—which can create win–win–win effects throughout the ecosystem—is important when the platform has strong demand from advertisers. Platform infrastructure improvements that motivate creators to supply more content (e.g., development toolkits) must be chosen carefully to avoid creating higher concentration among a few powerful creators. Investments in first-party content are most consequential when the platform scale is small and when it has greater urgency to attract more viewers. I show that revenue sharing is (only partly) a tug of war between the platform and creators because a moderate sharing formula strengthens the overall ecosystem and profits of all participants. However, revenue-sharing tensions indicate a need to extend the one-rate-for-all creators approach with richer revenue-sharing arrangements that can better accommodate heterogeneity among creators. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, information systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 247
Author(s):  
Vanessa Jiménez Serranía

 Resumen: La Directiva 2019/790 del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo de 17 de abril de 2019 sobre los derechos de autor y derechos afines en el mercado único digital ha implementado ciertas excepciones sobre la minería de textos y datos. Pese a que, a priori, podría parecer que se ofrece un impulso importante a este tipo de actividades sus efectos en la práctica quedan mitigados por el encorsetamiento de su formulación que, incluso, es susceptible de generar distorsiones competitivas. Este artículo pretende dar una visión sucinta y crítica sobre estas nuevas excepciones y plantear ciertas vías de mejora futura.Palabras clave: Big Data, minería de textos y datos, Internet de las cosas, Inteligencia Artificial, Mercado Único Digital, Directiva 2019/790, excepciones al derecho de autor, “uso justo”, regla de los tres pasos, doctrina de las facilidades esenciales, competencia, innovación.Abstract: Directive 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the digital single market has implemented certain exceptions on text and data mining. Although these exceptions might seem to provide a significant boost to this type of activities, their effects in practice are mitigated by the tightening of its wording, which is even likely to generate competitive distortions. This article aims to give a succinct and critical review of these new exceptions and to suggest some ways of improvement for the near future.Keywords: Big Data, Text and Data Mining (TDM), IoT, AI, Single Digital Market, Directive 2019/790, copyright limitations, “fair use”, “three-steps doctrine”, esencial facilities doctrine, competition, innovation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Corcoran ◽  
Florian Loebbert ◽  
Julian Miczajka ◽  
Matthias Staudacher

Abstract We extend the recently developed Yangian bootstrap for Feynman integrals to Minkowski space, focusing on the case of the one-loop box integral. The space of Yangian invariants is spanned by the Bloch-Wigner function and its discontinuities. Using only input from symmetries, we constrain the functional form of the box integral in all 64 kinematic regions up to twelve (out of a priori 256) undetermined constants. These need to be fixed by other means. We do this explicitly, employing two alternative methods. This results in a novel compact formula for the box integral valid in all kinematic regions of Minkowski space.


Author(s):  
Toshiaki Takigawa

ABSTRACT This article examines antitrust issues concerning digital platforms equipped with big data. Recent initiatives by the Japanese competition agency are highlighted, comparing them with those by the USA and EU competition authorities. First examined is whether competition among platforms would result in a select few super platforms with market power, concluding that AI with machine learning has augmented the power of super platforms with strong AI-capability, leading to increased importance of merger control over acquisitions by platforms. Next scrutinized is the argument for utility-regulation to be imposed on super platforms, concluding that wide support is limited to data portability, leaving competition law as the key tool for addressing super platforms, its core tool being the provision against exclusionary conduct, enforcement of which, initially, concerns whether to order super platforms to render their data accessible to their rivals. Passive refusal-to-share data needs to be scrutinized under the essential facility doctrine. Beyond passive refusal, platforms’ exclusionary conduct requires competition agencies to weigh the conduct’s exclusionary effects against its efficiency effects. Finally addressed is exploitative abuse, explaining its relation to consumer protection, concluding that competition law enforcement on exploitative abuse should be minimized, since it accompanies risk of over-enforcement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
I. L. Buchbinder ◽  
E. A. Ivanov ◽  
B. S. Merzlikin ◽  
K. V. Stepanyantz

Abstract We apply the harmonic superspace approach for calculating the divergent part of the one-loop effective action of renormalizable 6D, $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (1, 0) supersymmetric higher-derivative gauge theory with a dimensionless coupling constant. Our consideration uses the background superfield method allowing to carry out the analysis of the effective action in a manifestly gauge covariant and $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (1, 0) supersymmetric way. We exploit the regularization by dimensional reduction, in which the divergences are absorbed into a renormalization of the coupling constant. Having the expression for the one-loop divergences, we calculate the relevant β-function. Its sign is specified by the overall sign of the classical action which in higher-derivative theories is not fixed a priori. The result agrees with the earlier calculations in the component approach. The superfield calculation is simpler and provides possibilities for various generalizations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianqing Fan ◽  
Fang Han ◽  
Han Liu

Abstract Big Data bring new opportunities to modern society and challenges to data scientists. On the one hand, Big Data hold great promises for discovering subtle population patterns and heterogeneities that are not possible with small-scale data. On the other hand, the massive sample size and high dimensionality of Big Data introduce unique computational and statistical challenges, including scalability and storage bottleneck, noise accumulation, spurious correlation, incidental endogeneity and measurement errors. These challenges are distinguished and require new computational and statistical paradigm. This paper gives overviews on the salient features of Big Data and how these features impact on paradigm change on statistical and computational methods as well as computing architectures. We also provide various new perspectives on the Big Data analysis and computation. In particular, we emphasize on the viability of the sparsest solution in high-confidence set and point out that exogenous assumptions in most statistical methods for Big Data cannot be validated due to incidental endogeneity. They can lead to wrong statistical inferences and consequently wrong scientific conclusions.


Author(s):  
Robert Audi

Abstract Kant influentially distinguished analytic from synthetic a priori propositions, and he took certain propositions in the latter category to be of immense philosophical importance. His distinction between the analytic and the synthetic has been accepted by many and attacked by others; but despite its importance, a number of discussions of it since at least W. V. Quine’s have paid insufficient attention to some of the passages in which Kant draws the distinction. This paper seeks to clarify what appear to be three distinct conceptions of the analytic (and implicitly of the synthetic) that are presented in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and in some other Kantian texts. The conceptions are important in themselves, and their differences are significant even if they are extensionally equivalent. The paper is also aimed at showing how the proposed understanding of these conceptions—and especially the one that has received insufficient attention from philosophers—may bear on how we should conceive the synthetic a priori, in and beyond Kant’s own writings.


Author(s):  
CHENGGUANG ZHU ◽  
zhongpai Gao ◽  
Jiankang Zhao ◽  
Haihui Long ◽  
Chuanqi Liu

Abstract The relative pose estimation of a space noncooperative target is an attractive yet challenging task due to the complexity of the target background and illumination, and the lack of a priori knowledge. Unfortunately, these negative factors have a grave impact on the estimation accuracy and the robustness of filter algorithms. In response, this paper proposes a novel filter algorithm to estimate the relative pose to improve the robustness based on a stereovision system. First, to obtain a coarse relative pose, the weighted total least squares (WTLS) algorithm is adopted to estimate the relative pose based on several feature points. The resulting relative pose is fed into the subsequent filter scheme as observation quantities. Second, the classic Bayes filter is exploited to estimate the relative state except for moment-of-inertia ratios. Additionally, the one-step prediction results are used as feedback for WTLS initialization. The proposed algorithm successfully eliminates the dependency on continuous tracking of several fixed points. Finally, comparison experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm presents a better performance in terms of robustness and convergence time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-147
Author(s):  
Aleksey Zazdravnykh

The article analyzes the practical aspects of the functioning of some barriers to entry in the era of digital transformation of industry markets. It is noted that under the influence of digitalization processes, both positive changes in the mechanism of market operation are recorded, as well as a number of negative circumstances that have become a serious challenge for antitrust agencies. Control of big data, initial investment in digital infrastructure, and broad technological capabilities of digital blocking of users, against the background of powerful network effects and pronounced economies of scale, carry the potential for significant growth in the market power of individual firms. The article substantiates that such trends theoretically pose a significant threat to competition, and can form new types of entry barriers. At the same time, practical arguments are presented that indicate the ambiguity of this position.


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