[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jcomle/v9y2013i2p419-455..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Market Dominance And Search Quality In The Search Engine Market

Author

Listed:
  • Ioannis Lianos
  • Evgenia Motchenkova
Abstract
We analyze a search engine market from a law and economics perspective and incorporate the choice of quality-improving innovations by a search engine platform in a two-sided model of Internet search engine. In the proposed framework, we first discuss the legal issues the search engine market raises for antitrust policy through analysis of several types of abusive behavior by the dominant platform. We also explore possible consequences of monopolization of the search engine market for advertisers and users in the form of excessive pricing and deterioration of the quality of the search results. Second, in the technical analysis part, we incorporate these considerations in a two-sided market model and analyze the rate of innovation, pricing, and quality choices by the dominant search engine. Our findings show that a dominant monopoly platform results in higher prices and underinvestment in quality-improving innovations by a search engine relative to the social optimum. More generally, we show that monopoly is sub-optimal in terms of harm to advertisers in the form of excessive prices, harm to users in the form of reduction in quality of search results, as well as harm to the society in the form of lower innovation rates in the industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Ioannis Lianos & Evgenia Motchenkova, 2013. "Market Dominance And Search Quality In The Search Engine Market," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 419-455.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:9:y:2013:i:2:p:419-455.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/joclec/nhs037
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jens Prüfer & Christoph Schottmüller, 2021. "Competing with Big Data," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(4), pages 967-1008, December.
    2. Eric K. Clemons & Ravi V. Waran & Sebastian Hermes & Maximilian Schreieck & Helmut Krcmar, 2022. "Computing and Social Welfare," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 32(2), pages 417-436, June.
    3. Edward Iacobucci & Francesco Ducci, 2019. "The Google search case in Europe: tying and the single monopoly profit theorem in two-sided markets," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 15-42, February.
    4. Marco Botta & Klaus Wiedemann, 2020. "To discriminate or not to discriminate? Personalised pricing in online markets as exploitative abuse of dominance," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 381-404, December.
    5. Ji, Sung Wook & Choi, Young-jun & Ryu, Min Ho, 2016. "The economic effects of domestic search engines on the development of the online advertising market," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 982-995.
    6. Budzinski, Oliver, 2016. "Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Wettbewerbspolitik durch Marktplätze im Internet," Ilmenau Economics Discussion Papers 103, Ilmenau University of Technology, Institute of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
    • L88 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:9:y:2013:i:2:p:419-455.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcle .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.