Antitrust Chronicle^® – Platforms: Value Creation and Potential Harms

Dear Readers,

The practice of antitrust law is essentially an exercise in tradeoffs. How does a given practice by businesses benefit consumers? And how does it potentially harm them? Some practices are unambiguous: cartels, for example, produce no conceivable consumer benefit (and depress the economy as a whole). Other practices (particularly involving potential abuses of dominance) involve a more complex analysis of the inherent tradeoffs involved. This is all the more true as the economy becom