nam 22 uu 4500 dbt_mods_00026660 0949-3859 dbt_mods_00026660 ger DE-601 rda eng 2015-12-17 2015-10-20 330 sdnb Budzinski, Oliver Prof. Dr. rer. pol. habil. Author aut (DE-588)131737163 Is Amazon the next Google? Budzinski, Oliver;Köhler, Karoline Henrike (2015-10-20) Ilmenau 2015-10-21 41 Seiten text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier Diskussionspapier Ilmenau Economics Discussion Papers Diskussionspapiere des Instituts für Volkswirtschaftslehre Dominant or apparently dominant internet platform increasingly become subject to both antitrust investigations and further-reaching political calls for regulation. While Google is currently in the focus of the discussion, the next candidate is already on the horizon - the ubiquitous online trading platform Amazon. Competitors and suppliers but also famous economists like Paul Krugman unite in criticizing Amazon's market power and alleged abuse of it. In this paper, we collect the multitude of allegations against Amazon and categorize them according to types of potential anticompetitive conduct or types of market failure. We provide an economic analysis of these allegations based upon economic theory as well as publicly available information and data. As one of our main results, we find that the most severe allegations against Amazon do not hold from an economic perspective and, consequently, do not warrant regulation or other drastic interventions (like breaking the company up). However, several areas of conduct, in particular, the use of best price clauses and the (anti-) competitive interplay of Amazon and the major publishers in the e-book market require competition policy action. The standard antitrust instruments, enriched with modern economic theory, should suffice to disincentivize the identified anticompetitive conduct for now. antitrust internet platform economics media economics competition policy innovation Amazon Google e-books book industry best-price clauses abuse of dominance pricing regulation book Köhler, Karoline Henrike Dipl. Kauffrau (FH) Author aut Technische Universität Ilmenau Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften und Medien (ab 2014) host institution his Technische Universität Ilmenau Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre Publisher pbl Technische Universität Ilmenau Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften (bis 2013) Host institution his Diskussionspapier dbt_mods_00005261 Ilmenau Economics Discussion Papers dbt_mods_00005261 Diskussionspapiere des Instituts für Volkswirtschaftslehre dbt_mods_00005261 https://www.db-thueringen.de/receive/dbt_mods_00026660 object in context https://www.db-thueringen.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/dbt_derivate_00032516/Diskussionspapier_Nr_97.pdf raw object https://www.db-thueringen.de/rsc/thumbnail/dbt_mods_00026660.png preview http://uri.gbv.de/document/gvk:ppn:837605962 uri