Evans, David S. <br/><br/>
The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses / 
David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee. 
 - Cambridge, Mass.  National Bureau of Economic Research  2013. 
 - 1 online resource:  illustrations (black and white); 
 - NBER working paper series  no. w18783 .
 - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)  no. w18783. .
<br/><br/> February 2013. 
<br/><br/> This Chapter provides a survey of the economics literature on multi-sided platforms with particular focus on competition policy issues, including market definition, mergers, monopolization, and coordinated behavior.   It provides a survey of the general industrial organization theory of multi-sided platforms and then considers various issues concerning the application of antitrust analysis to multi-sided platform businesses.  It shows that it is not possible to know whether standard economic models, often relied on for antitrust analysis, apply to multi-sided platforms without explicitly considering the existence of multiple customer groups with interdependent demand. It summarizes many theoretical and empirical papers that demonstrate that a number of results for single-sided firms, which are the focus of much of the applied antitrust economics literature, do not apply directly to multi-sided platforms. 
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