Platform Economics in Vertically-Related Structures

Identificador:  TDX:3939

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3939

Autors:  D'Amico, Giuseppe

Resum:
In the last decade, the rise and expansion of the platform economy has represented the new economic revolution. Helped by the digitization, this new form of organizing the economy has changed the overall Industry Architecture and reformed the whole value-creation process, which has passed from vertical-chain structures to more horizontal ecosystems. Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are a clear example of this disruptive change. This thesis is composed of three independent essays related to new platform economy. In chapter 1, we analyze the combined effect of consumer foresight and competition on platform profits, by analyzing the airport industries. Interestingly, we find that the optimal strategy of a monopoly airport ultimately depends on the degree of consumer foresight and it is insensitive to changes in the competitive environment. Nevertheless, the correlation between airport profits and consumer myopia is positive when considering a monopoly airports and weakly negative when considering airport competition. In chapter 2, we analyze the self- and delegated distribution in the e-book industry, by taking into consideration the specific case of Amazon. Our main result suggests that self-publishing results in higher e-book prices for consumers under certain circumstances. Finally, in chapter 3 we address the topic of the sale of consumer information, by characterizing the optimal strategy of a data owner who has to decide whether to sell his data or using them to compete in the market. We find that the data owner does not have a dominant strategy.