ABSTRACT
Platform regulation has to be grounded on a sound understanding of the new model of industrial organization of multi-sided markets. Platforms use technology to enable the interaction between third parties. They do not have the ambition to own the underlying assets nor to provide the underlying services. Platforms, on the contrary, have the ambition to become the system coordinators as they give a structure to the interactions between third parties. Platforms enable new network effects based on new complementarities between the underlying assets and services. In this sense, digital platforms are the new network industries, as their role is to create networks, even if this time these are virtual networks built on the data layer on top of the infrastructure and service layers. Network effects lead to the concentration of the market, if not to winner-take-all scenarios, not different from the traditional network industries. The 100 year experience on the regulation of the network industries provides the ultimate model for the regulation of the new network industries.
