Practical approaches to assessing digital platform markets for competition law enforcement

This paper highlights some practical approaches for competition authorities pursuing digital platform enforcement cases, given the unique challenges this can involve. It explains the key features of digital platform market dynamics and emphasises the importance of selecting and prioritising cases based on economic impact, resource requirements and probability of success, among other criteria. It discusses the challenges of market definition due to multi-sidedness, and proposes defining markets only when necessary and explains the limitations of some tools for assessing market power, and lays out a qualitative approach that can be followed and supplemented with key indicators, whose limitations should be clearly recognised. It was prepared as background material for the session "Practical approaches to assessing digital platform markets for competition law enforcement " held at the 2019 Latin American and Caribbean Competition Forum in Honduras on 24-25 September 2019.