Market Definition as a Social Construction

This paper addresses the potential for conflict between antitrust authorities in the arena of merger control in the new economy. By “new economy” we mean two related developments. First, the internationalization of the economy, i.e. the ability to sell and produce products world-wide, and secondly, markets with certain characteristics such as network effects and other aspects of natural monopoly. We focus on three types of substantive issues in merger control – market definition, assessment of competitive effects, and the role of remedies. We argue that the scope for conflict varies significantly across these three arenas. In particular, conflict over market definition is less likely. By contrast, the assessment of competitive effects and the role of remedies are areas where conflict between antitrust authorities may be more likely in “new economy-type” markets.

Market definition is the first step of competition analysis. In practice, relevant markets are mostly defined for the end products and services and it is also the same for current cases concerning Internet-based businesses (IBBs). Data has important influence on the competition of IBBs. However, instead of selling data directly, the IBBs usually use data to produce, improve and innovate products and services. Under such circumstances, there may be no relevant market defined for such data following the conventional market definition methods. This article’s investigation shows that online data play different roles in the competition of IBBs and the conventional competition analysis methods only miss some aspects but not all of them. Alternative approaches including the input market definition and the putative online data market definition proposition fail to solve the problem. What might be of help is to switch focus to improving the relevant market definition methods for products and services which online data are related to and pay more attention to the inner relationship between online data and the Internet-based products and services when identifying which market to define.

Relevant market definition methodology has been a thorny issue over the years for antitrust doctrine and practice. This is especially true when it comes to digital markets, in which prices may not be a significant variable for defining relevant markets. Traditional or static views of competition may result in improper market definitions, which might result in the clearance of mergers in digital markets because antitrust authorities define market shares according to traditional methods of measurement. However, this seems like a chicken-and-egg problem, because it is only by appropriately defining relevant markets that it is possible to establish if market shares are high or low. This article discusses practical implications for antitrust enforcement derived from the relevant market definitions adopted in high-profile digital market mergers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Many of these cases have elements of conglomerate or vertical integration that go beyond traditional demand substitution measurement and test the authorities’ ability to foresee future competitive scenarios in which digital competition and brick-and-mortar competition have become increasingly complementary. These cases also show an increasingly large role of data concentration as a driver in the attractiveness of the acquisitions.

An Antitrust Practitioner's Guide to Platform Markets: A Review of the Relevant Economic Literature

Using Stock Market Evidence to Inform the Definition of Product Markets in Competition Law

In recent years, with the continuous development of digital economy, regulating the healthy development of platform economy has become an important issue. China's relevant government departments call for a clear adherence to the principles of “fair competition”, and for the strengthening of anti-monopoly and the establishment and improvement of market supervision to adapt to the development of the digital economy. In the process of anti-monopoly law enforcement, the relevant market definition is usually regarded as the logical starting point of analyzing the competitive behavior. Compared with traditional enterprises, platform enterprises have bilateral market characteristics such as “cross network externality” and “asymmetric price structure”, which face challenges in defining their relevant markets. This article first clear the bilateral market meaning, then discusses the platform enterprise bilateral market characteristics, and sort out the scholars in recent years about “define a single or multiple market” “assumed monopolist test is applicable”point of view, finally analyzed the “Sherpa's Abused Market Dominance” “Tangshan Renren Company v.Baidu Case” “Qihoo360 v.Tencent Case” three Chinese anti-monopoly law enforcement cases. The aim is to further discuss how to better combine the theoretical investigation and case analysis of qualitative and quantitative analysis to define the relevant market more accurately.

This article analyses the problem of the micro-macro link. Two alternative frameworks have traditionally been offered to account for this relationship - methodological individualism and methodological holism. The author upholds four theses. First, these two alternatives are incapable of accounting for all possible relationships between microsociological regularities and macrosociological generalizations. Second, there are at least three different ways to formalize micro-macro relationships: parallelism, localism and convergentism. Third, high-level and low-level explanations provide radically different kinds of information. Finally, the author explores a possible naturalization of the debate. The article as a whole can be read as a contribution to the problem of social complexity.

Analyzing social wrongs

Singapore's Competition Regime and its Objectives: The Case Against Formalism

This work performs a theoretical approach to market definition analysis. The conditions a test must satisfy are selected in order to define the relevant market according to the jurisdictions of the United States and the European Union as most tests proposed by economists tend not to satisfy all the required conditions. I use two models of horizontal product differentiation to illustrate the nature of the tests that can be used under each jurisdiction. The main conclusion of the paper is that the empirical tests for market definition which are valid in the current legislations in the United States and the European Union must be performed using a different approach which may yield different relevant markets.

The article deals with the peculiarities of the interaction of archetypes of individual and collective in the context of the model of the universal social cycle and the history of the development of corresponding concepts. Modern sociological theories are the attempts to find answers to challenges of the ongoing modernization process. Controversial approaches in most sociological theories seem to be “methodological individualism” or “methodological holism”. Accordingly, modern space is marked, so to speak, by the dominance of “instrumental reason”. With the onset of the early Modern era, societies have a rigid opposition to traditional social institutions and values (in the spirit of “revolutionary disobedience of socio-class interests”). The contradictions between individual and collective become sharp, which ultimately, is resolved in favor of the latter. The developed Modern is already characterized by the ideals of stability and security that reconcile individual and collective. Instead, the late Modern (or Postmodern) reinforces the controversy in individual and collective relations, stimulates social disintegration, blurs individual and collective identities. The issue of the nonlinear, cyclic approach to the highlighting of the interaction of archetypes of individual and collective remains open. For every person living in the society in one way or another is connected with the information-energy interaction between society and the individual, between “WE” and “I”. Postmodernity also actualizes the other side of social life of a human being, society and civilization, which is a cyclical psychosocial process. Each of the stages of this process reveals, as evidenced by the research of the Ukrainian school of archetypes, national peculiarities of social systems, as well as typical for one or another historical epoch psychosocial characteristics, and socio-historical development appears as interaction of mental and social structures.

After noting the lack of enthusiasm of several well-known scholars concerning the adoption of both methodological holism and methodological individualism in its several versions, this paper shows that institutional individualism is a different mode of explanation from both of these and also that it is not the same thing as the so-called Popperian programme of situational analysis. Institutional individualism is a mode of explanation that yields non-systemic and non-reductionist explanations at the same time as it allows for the incorporation into economic theories and models of the many formal and informal institutional aspects surrounding all human interactions, whether these interactions take place within stable structures of legal rules and social norms or whether they attempt to change the said rules and norms. Finally, the paper shows that it is possible for old institutionalists to make institutional individualist analyses of institutional changes while retaining the remaining methodological assumptions of the school. The same is true for new institutionalists. Some examples are offered from both camps. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.

Social structure has always been one of the central concepts in classical and contemporary sociological thought. The concept of social structure points to a different articulation of the macro and micro elements of social life. Its meaning has to be understood in the context of the discursive networks in which it is used. The aim of the article is to explore the concept of social structure by making explicit the main conceptual networks from which the different uses of the concept obtain their meaning. We have organized our discussion of social structure around the four paradigms that we have identified as (1) methodological individualism, (2) methodological holism, (3) microsociological ‘theory’, (4) eclectic ‘theory’.

Abstract. The efficient market hypothesis and behavioural finance theory have been the cornerstone of modern asset pricing for the past 50 odd years. Although both theories are fundamental in explaining modern asset pricing, they are opposing views. The efficient market hypothesis dictates that the price of any asset depends on the information, while the behavioural finance theory dictates that the price depends on the reaction of the market participants to the information. Therein lays the key to the argument influencing modern asset pricing, does price immediately reflect the information or market participants’ perception of the information. In this paper, we will critical evaluate the theory influencing the efficient market hypothesis. We will review the neoclassical economics underpinning the efficient market hypothesis and the recent empirical evidence. In concluding, we find that although the efficient market hypothesis has difficulties in testing and the empirical evidence is mixed. Yet it is useful as a benchmark for regulators and central bankers alike. However, market participants are homo sapiens and not homo economics; hence there is a requirement to understand their reaction. So in essence leading to a requirement to include the behavioural finance theory, if we are to understand asset pricing. Keywords. Efficient market hypothesis, Behavioural finance theory, Neoclassical economics JEL. B13, G02, G03, G12, G14.

Predominant debates within the literature consider fatigue from an individualistic perspective. They are based on a shared underlying premise that individuals experience physiologic fatigue as a consequence of long working hours and sleep deprivation. As I have outlined above, there is considerable disagreement about how this plays out when a fatigued individual provides patient care while learning to practice medicine. Another way of thinking about these problems would be to consider fatigue not only a physiologic state but also a social and collective phenomenon. There are glimpses of this perspective in the literature. For example, Puddester points out that the success of fatigue management plans depend upon "a workplace and training environment that encourages and promotes good health, including good sleep." 49( p2) Lopez and Katz acknowledge that physicians are "embedded in a social environment that can either facilitate or hamper their commitment to the professional ideals of medicine." 2( p316) By approaching the issue of fatigue from a different perspective, as a collective and social phenomenon, further insights await that would not otherwise be appreciated by a purely individualistic stance. My thesis 1 aims to explore fatigue as a social phenomenon. As an extension of this purpose, I explored interventions that are intended to modify fatigue, such as work hour restrictions and fatigue management plans through a similar lens. A more detailed discussion of my social constructivist stance and the impact this had on the chosen methodology for this research is provided in Chapter 2. The specific research questions that comprise this research program are outlined below and followed by a brief summary of each respective chapter.