Payment Systems as a Driver for Platform Growth in E-Commerce

This chapter visits some of the fundamental concepts from platform economics, network effects, and network externalities. Further on, it discusses definitions of two-sided and multi-sided markets, how they are treated as business models. These concepts are further compared to the concept service ecosystem. A case of a payment service provider whose business model contributes to the growth of e-commerce is included. The purpose is to tease out how research on platforms has developed since e-commerce was in its infancy. The fundamental concepts developed in network economics are still valid and have been translated into different fields with a focus on value creation, information, and interaction. How platforms within platforms spur each other's growth is an area that has the potential to reach new insights on the platform economy.

Creator Governance in Social Media Entertainment

This article addresses the platformization of cultural production by offering a creator-centric account of industrial and governance issues in social media entertainment (SME). SME is our term for the emerging industry of native online cultural producers together with the platforms, intermediaries, and fan communities operating interdependently, and disruptively, alongside legacy media industries and across global media cultures. The central concern of the article is that these creators are not recognized as stakeholders in current debates both academic and policy on platform governance. The relationship between the platform behemoths and individual creators may seem grossly disproportionate, but insights from network economics suggest a more supple account of power. The interests of creators are examined in the “top-down” context of the exercise of platform governance and efforts, by platforms and the state, to improve it. Those interests are also canvassed from the “bottom up”—how creators and creator advocacy are organizing and acting collectively to improve prospects for creators in this emerging industry.

Der Grundversorger zwischen Wettbewerb und Gemeinwohl

The European markets for electricity and gas are seeing a growing competition, which raises the question of whether the German basic supplier for grid-bound energy is still an institution worth keeping. After careful consideration of arguments from the fields of network economics and competition theory, this remarkable juridical figure seems to be more and more of a contradiction. Findings from behavioural economics and regulatory theory support this judgment further, but in the end, it is constitutional and European law which makes the German implementation of basic supply by way of a supplier of last resort seem obsolete. After all, there has not been a local monopoly of energy supply by law or in real life for quite some time. The author is an attorney practising in the fields of antitrust and energy law.