Multisided Platforms, Big Data, and a Little Antitrust Policy

Commentators on both the right and the left ends of the political spectrum have called for new and more forceful approaches to antitrust enforcement with respect to large multisided platforms: especially Amazon, Facebook, and Google. In part, these calls have been driven by the fact that these platforms have business models that make extensive use of data about their users. This article surveys what economics has to say about a wide range of antitrust issues—including the treatment of exclusionary conduct, merger, and privacy—that are raised by multisided platforms’ reliance on big data collected about their users.