Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent, and Uber:
Platform businesses have fundamentally changed not only the way many industries work but also the daily lives of individuals worldwide. To understand these companies and the markets they create, we must understand the economic principles behind the operation of these platforms.
This seminar will cover key topics within the Economics of Digital Platforms, such as:
1. Tools to Create Network Effects: Ratings, Recommendations, and the Use of Big Data
2. Pricing Strategies of Platforms
3. Drivers of Platform Expansion
4. Platform Design: Nonprice Strategies, Behavioral Biases, Governance
Platform businesses have fundamentally changed not only the way many industries work but also the daily lives of individuals worldwide. To understand these companies and the markets they create, we must understand the economic principles behind the operation of these platforms.
This seminar will cover key topics within the Economics of Digital Platforms, such as:
1. Tools to Create Network Effects: Ratings, Recommendations, and the Use of Big Data
2. Pricing Strategies of Platforms
3. Drivers of Platform Expansion
4. Platform Design: Nonprice Strategies, Behavioral Biases, Governance
5. Competition between platforms: compatibility decisions, multi-homing, mergers, and innovation incentives
This course explores what drives platform firms and the economic
outcomes their strategies create, such as how they manage network
effects and which pricing and non-price tactics they use, and how this
benefits (or harms!) consumers.
Grounded in formal economic analysis, this course gives students flexibility to pursue their seminar topic in different ways, depending on their personal interests: they can choose to illustrate their topic through a detailed case study of real-world platform firms, highlighting how the course concepts apply in practice; they can find and present existing empirical literature (where available) on the topic, "testing" how well the theory explains the real world and is therefore helpful for guiding economic policy; or they dive deeper into the economic theory relating to their chosen topic, aiming to deepen the insights beyond the broad strokes made in the core references.
Grounded in formal economic analysis, this course gives students flexibility to pursue their seminar topic in different ways, depending on their personal interests: they can choose to illustrate their topic through a detailed case study of real-world platform firms, highlighting how the course concepts apply in practice; they can find and present existing empirical literature (where available) on the topic, "testing" how well the theory explains the real world and is therefore helpful for guiding economic policy; or they dive deeper into the economic theory relating to their chosen topic, aiming to deepen the insights beyond the broad strokes made in the core references.
- Dozent: David Angenendt
- Dozent: Hanna Hottenrott