| The recent debates on network neutrality are focused on regulating network operators so that they cannot overuse their power as bottleneck owners or gatekeepers to the detriment of ICT ecosystem. However, constraining the power of network operators may not be enough to resolve bottleneck issue of the ICT industry. We have recently observed more than a few platforms emerging as dominant players and the concern is growing that these platforms aim ultimately at achieving and taking advantage of the bottleneck positions. They may begin with different types of essential or popular services such as operating system, search engine, e-commerce, and social network service but share the common objective of attracting more users and application providers as well as capitalizing on the locked-in regular users. They also tend to keep expanding their service areas to encourage the users to do more activities and to spend more time on their own platforms, which will contribute to raising their bottleneck powers and hence profits. Although it is not yet obvious how each of these new platforms will turn their power into profit, they can exercise market power, for instance, on the application or content providers or may attempt to commercialize collected user information as they keep records of users’ online activities. These possibilities imply that the competition policy or personal information protection policy might be required to regulate platforms abusing their bottleneck powers. Of course, new business models based on these platforms have a great potential of efficiency, especially in the context of network externality and two-sided market structure. However, such efficiency and their growing role as an industry leader need to be thoroughly assessed against potential problems of platform bottleneck. AJIC special session invites original papers that analyze the potential issues regarding platform’s bottleneck power as well as its contributions as an industry leader or innovator.
While preference will be given to empirical papers, conceptual studies will also be considered. Some topics under consideration include: · What are the essential features of business models of the recent ICT platforms?
· What do we find about the structure, conduct, and performance of platform competition?
· Is it reasonable to presume that ICT platforms aim at taking advantage of bottleneck positions?
· What is the appropriate competition policy in response to the emergence of platform bottlenecks?
· How could we protect personal information of the users while allowing the innovative business
models to operate on these platforms?
· Does platform leadership make efficiency and innovation enough to ignore the bottleneck issue? The deadline for submission of papers is October 15, 2012.
|
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기