Digital Goods and Digital Platforms

In this study, I analyze the characteristics of consumer attitudes toward digital and non-digital service provision in the platform business and discuss its regulation. Specifically, I employ consumer questionnaires on subscription services and extract comparable objects to examine the interests that end consumers evince in the provision of these goods and services, thereby enabling better distinction between digital and non-digital goods. A logit analysis of consumer attitudes toward digital and non-digital goods shows that low-price appeals are more effective for digital goods than for non-digital goods, and that they are demanded by younger, male, and higher-income consumers based on an online survey conducted in February 2021. In terms of regulatory and research responses, the issue of market dominance needs to be examined in light of business activities based on the characteristics of goods.

China's Regulatory Framework for Dynamic and Personalized Pricing in the Digital Economy

Under the Chinese legal system, in principle, there is no objection to dynamic and personalized pricing of enterprises. Dynamic pricing does not involve the processing of personal information, and consumers have a higher perception of price fairness, it is seldom concerned by laws and policies. Personalized pricing involves the processing of personal information, and consumers generally feel that the price is unfair and difficult to accept, so it is the focus of legal regulation. Enterprises face three obstacles in implementing personalized pricing. First, in terms of personal information protection, enterprises should abide by the provisions on personal consent and automatic decision-making in the Personal Information Protection Law. Second, in the aspect of anti-monopoly, enterprises should abide by the provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law, and cannot achieve collusion through algorithms and abuse market dominance to implement differential treatment for trading counterparts. Third, in the protection of consumers' rights and interests, enterprises should respect the Price Law and other laws, and cannot commit price fraud and price discrimination. The current law on dynamic and personalized pricing is not perfect. In the future, we can protect consumers' rights and interests mainly by strengthening enterprises' obligation of providing information.

The Practice of Oldhammer: Re-Membering a Past Through Craft and Play

Games Workshop is a juggernaut in the world of tabletop games and miniatures with a long history and near total market dominance of the wargaming industry. However, over the last decade Oldhammer, a game and hobby community, has sought to contest this hegemony by rejecting Game Workshop’s 21st century games, miniatures, and aesthetics in favor of an attempted return to an earlier vision of the Games Workshop hobby and an accompanying possibility of alterity. We explore how Oldhammer uses memory and craft to return to the conditions of possibility which allowed for other possible tabletop futures and even the potential for resistance. In doing so, we draw on theories of memory, craft, and nostalgia to show how Oldhammer, however imperfectly, contests corporatization and control.

Proposed Mexico energy reforms would be radical

Significance The aim is to restore the market dominance of the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). The move would sideline private players and potentially force the closure of some private generation plants. It would also have serious ramifications for hydrocarbons and mining. Impacts Approval could lead to insufficient electricity supplies, increased manufacturing costs, reduced foreign investment and lower GDP growth. The proposed changes could affect foreign investment in areas beyond the energy sector. Negative consequences for foreign firms in Mexico and for the environment could increase tensions with the United States and the EU.

PEMBATASAN TERHADAP PERSAINGAN UNTUK MEMBENTUK PASAR DALAM KASUS STANDARD ESSENTIAL PATENT (SEP) (PERBANDINGAN HUKUM PERSAINGAN USAHA DI INDONESIA DAN UNI EROPA)

The role of patents is complex when dealing with the problem of technological interoperability in cases where patented technology becomes standard. In such cases, a balance is needed between the protection of the interests of the inventor, i.e. the standard essential patent (SEP) holder, and of users who need the technology to enter the market. There is a susceptibility to restrictions on competition to create markets (competition for the market). Market dominance can be created by the adoption of SEP holder technology as a standard and hence, a key for other business actors to enter the market. With the potential for the formation of a dominant position in the relevant market, the competition law intervention is required when patent abuse occurs, as it appears typical in the pharmaceutical and information technology industries. The normative research examines how competition law in the European Union deals with SEP cases in comparison to Indonesian competition law.

A Dynamic Contest Model of Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets

This paper examines the dynamic competition between platform firms in two-sided markets with network externalities. In our model, two platforms compete with each other via a contest to dominate a certain market. If one platform wins the contest, it can serve the market for a certain duration as a monopolistic platform. Our paper shows that platform firms can compensate for cost disadvantages with network effects. A head start (e.g., technological advantage) does not guarantee future success for platform firms. Network effects and cost efficiency are decisive for future success. Interestingly, higher costs of a platform can induce higher platform profits in our dynamic model. Moreover, we find that a platform’s size and profit are not necessarily positively correlated. Our model also provides new insights with respect to the underlying causes for the emergence of market dominance. The combination of technological carry-over and network effects can explain a long-lasting dominance of a platform that benefits from a head start. The necessary preconditions for this emergence are convex costs, small network effects and high carry-over.

Fragmentation in trader preferences among multiple markets: market coexistence versus single market dominance

Technological advancement has led to an increase in the number and type of trading venues and a diversification of goods traded. These changes have re-emphasized the importance of understanding the effects of market competition: does proliferation of trading venues and increased competition lead to dominance of a single market or coexistence of multiple markets? In this paper, we address these questions in a stylized model of zero-intelligence traders who make repeated decisions at which of three available markets to trade. We analyse the model numerically and analytically and find that the traders’ decision parameters—memory length and how strongly decisions are based on past success—make the key difference between consolidated and fragmented steady states of the population of traders. All three markets coexist with equal shares of traders only when either learning is too weak and traders choose randomly, or when markets are identical. In the latter case, the population of traders fragments across the markets. With different markets, we note that market dominance is the more typical scenario. Overall we show that, contrary to previous research emphasizing the role of traders’ heterogeneity, market coexistence can emerge simply as a consequence of co-adaptation of an initially homogeneous population of traders.