Description du projet
Mieux connaitre les géants du commerce électronique
Les plateformes en ligne, telles qu’Amazon, Alibaba et Google, sont devenues des géantes du commerce électronique. Elles constituent une part importante de l’économie numérique, générant des milliards d’euros de ventes nettes. Le règlement de l’UE sur l’équité et la transparence dans les relations entre les plateformes en ligne et les entreprises met en place un cadre harmonisé qui établit un niveau minimum de transparence et des droits de recours. Le projet DIPVAR, financé par l’UE, examinera un ensemble de recommandations destinées à appuyer la mise en place d’une politique efficace de la concurrence sur les marchés numériques, ce qui devrait permettre d’améliorer considérablement le bien-être des consommateurs européens. Il développera des modèles de marchés intégrant les plateformes numériques et étudiera les implications des pratiques commerciales de ces plateformes sur les prix, sur la variété et la qualité de l’offre, sur les concurrents de petite taille et sur la possibilité d’accès à ces plateformes. Les résultats de cette étude mettront en lumière les distorsions potentielles sur ces marchés extrêmement lucratifs.
Objectif
Digital platforms, such as Amazon, Alibaba, Google, have become important global players. Their practices have led to significant anti-trust and regulatory scrutiny, and interventions. The existing theoretical models are not suited for the analysis of most of digital platforms as they fail to capture their important aspects and dynamics. This project’s first goal is to develop tractable and applicable models of markets with digital platforms capturing their unique features. The second goal is to investigate the implications of digital platforms’ business practices on prices, variety and quality provision to buyers, on small rivals, and on potential platform entry. I plan to attain these goals via two work packages: WP1 will provide a tractable framework capturing important characteristics of online market places and can thus be used to analyze e-commerce platforms’ optimal seller contracts and the implied variety offered to consumers. After illustrating an equivalence between a trade platform and a multiproduct monopolist, WP1 will identify with which demand systems and information structure multiproduct firms under-/over-provide variety. Using equivalence conditions WP1 will study whether, how, and when the variety implied by platforms’ pricing diverges from the social optimality and which type of seller contracts could mitigate such distortions. WP2 will provide tractable and applicable models to study competition between asymmetric platforms to attract high quality sellers. WP2 will analyze how platforms’ restrictions on users multi-homing (participating in multiple platforms) and restrictions on switching behavior of users affect market allocation, quality provision, prices, entry and dynamics. The findings of this project will highlight potential distortions in these multi-billion markets and ultimately suggest effective policy recommendations for competition policy in digital markets, which can greatly improve consumer welfare in the EU.
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
50014 Fiesole
Italie