Adam Smith Business School

Professor Massimo Motta, ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona School of Economics

"Self-preferencing and foreclosure by digital platforms."
Wednesday, 15 November. 3 pm
Room 253. Gilbert Scott Building

Abstract

Antitrust agencies all over the world have been investigating large digital platforms for practices, which may constitute an abuse of dominance. I discuss practices (including ‘self-preferencing’ and denial or degradation of interoperability) which can be interpreted as foreclosure in vertically-related or complementary markets (in particular, a few high-profile cases involving Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google). I focus on possible theories of harm for such cases and show that both original simple models and well-established economic theories (adapted or interpreted) provide a rationale for anti-competitive foreclosure.

Bio

Massimo Motta is Research Professor at ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra and at the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE). He served as Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission from 2013 to 2016.
Massimo’s research has been published in the main economic journals. His book on Competition Policy: Theory and Practice (Cambridge U.P., 2004) is the standard reference on the economics of antitrust. He also co-authored Exclusionary practices. The Economics of Monopolisation and Abuse of Dominance (Cambridge U.P., 2018).
He was President of EARIE (European Association of Researchers in Industrial Economics), 2020-2022.

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First published: 30 October 2023