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16 Eur. Competition J. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/eurcompet16 and id is 1 raw text is: EUROPEAN COMPETITION JOURNAL Routledge 2020, VOL. 16, NO. 1, 1-10 https://doi.org/10.1080/17441056.2020.1730063 Taylor & Francis Group Competition policy and digital platforms: six uncontroversial propositions* Mike Walkert How should a competition authority act with respect to digital platforms? This has become a hot topic in competition policy recently. This note discusses six propositions that are in our view entirely uncontroversial but which can help us to think clearly about the answer to this question. Uncontroversial proposition 1: digital platforms have created an enormous amount of consumer welfare It is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that the digital platforms, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, have created an enormous amount of consumer welfare. For instance, a study reported in The Economist found that the median amount a US consumer would have to be paid to give up access to internet search for a year was more than $17,500.1 The figure for email was about $8400 and maps about $3600. If we translate these figures in to a figure for the whole economy, it is a very large number. Amazon has greatly enhanced consumer welfare. Not just by helping us avoid the ghastly experience of visiting shops, but also by dramatically increasing the range of choices that we have. And think about all those small online retailers whose business is predicated on access via Amazon, or eBay or whoever, to vastly more consumers than they could ever have reached on their own. And apparently consumers like Facebook too. The study quoted above estimated that the median Face- book user would have to be compensated by between $40 and $50 per month to leave the service. *This paper is based on a keynote Mike Walker gave on 13 December 2019 at a Public Policy Workshop at King's College London entitled Competition and Digital Platforms. CONTACT Mike Walker mike.walker@cma.gov.uk tDr Walker is the Chief Economic Advisor at the Competition and Markets Authority, the UK's competition authority. *This paper is based on a keynote Mike Walker gave on 13 December 2019 at a Public Policy Workshop at King's College London entitled Competition and Digital Platforms. 'E Brynjolfsson, F Eggers and A Gannamaneni, 'Using Massive Online Choice Experiments to Measure Changes in Well-being' (2018) NBER Working Paper. Referred to in The Economist daily chart of 25-4- 18. Numbers quoted from Table 7. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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