The paper provides an analysis of the second-degree price discrimination problem on a monopolistic two-sided market. In a framework with two distinct types of agents on either side of the market, we show that under incomplete information the extent of platform access for high-demand agents is strictly lower than the benchmark level with complete information. In addition, we find that it is possible in the monopoly optimum that the contract for low-demand agents is more expensive than the one for high-demand agents if the extent of interaction with agents from the opposite market side is contract-specific.

This paper investigates whether a price-concentration relationship can be found on local cinema markets in Germany. First, we test a model of monopolistic pricing using a new set of German micro data and find no significant difference in admission prices on monopoly and oligopoly markets. In a next step, we test whether this can be explained by the existence of local monopolies, but find no hint of that. Implicit or explicit collusion among cinema operators might explain our observations. JEL Classifications: L11, L82, R32

In this paper, we show that a provision in antitrust law to allow patent settlements with a later market entry of generics than the date that is expected under patent litigation can increase consumer welfare. We introduce a policy parameter for determining the optimal additional period for collusion that would incentivize the challenging of weak patents and maximize consumer welfare. While in principle, later market entry leads to higher profits and lower consumer welfare, this can be more than compensated for if more patents are challenged as a result.

We analyse the optimal location choice of a monopolistic firm that operates two arbitrarily located platforms on a two-sided market. By extending the traditional Hotelling framework, we show that the optimal platform locations are equivalent to the one-sided benchmark if both sides are either restricted to single-or multi-homing. In the mixed case (one side single-homes, the other one multi-homes), the optimal platform locations are in line with the respective symmetric case. If the monopolist is restricted to choosing the same location on either side of the market, the optimal locations are determined by the relative profitability of the market sides.

We make a case for price-increasing competition on "competitive bottleneck" two-sided markets. Unlike previous literature on price-increasing competition and two-sided markets, we abstract from product/platform differentiation, structural differences, scale effects, search costs, and capacity constraints, which would per se favor the one or the other market structure. We argue that demand interrelation as given on many competitive bottleneck twosided markets might be sufficient to cause either no observable price effect of competition or price-increasing competition under certain conditions. We derive these conditions and illustrate the economic intuition. Under price equality, virtually everything except for the number of platform operators is identical in monopoly and duopoly. Nevertheless, total demand on both market sides in the duopoly market exceeds total demand in the monopoly market. Furthermore, even though there is no observable price effect, there is still a competitive effect that becomes manifest in total duopoly equilibrium profits being strictly smaller than monopoly profits. The relationship of total welfare is ambiguous in subsidization cases, while it is strictly greater in duopoly, if no subsidization takes place.