Does Antitrust Have a Role to Play in Regulating Big Data?

The Effect of Big Data on Recommendation Quality. The Example of Internet Search

“…Hence, while our approaches share the same underlying idea to control for non-data related factors, our dataset allows a different implementation of the concept Other contributions approach the topic of scale economies in data from a policy perspective: Lerner (2014), Lambrecht and Tucker (2013) and Sokol and Comerford (2017) argue that economies of scale from data collection are low (even for tail queries) and that positive feedback loops between data collection and service quality (Pasquale, 2015;Bodapati, 2008;Stucke and Grunes, 2015) should be expected to be weak. Schepp and Wambach (2015) and Sokol and Comerford (2017) submit that the value of data is often of transitory nature and relevant only over a short time period. Argenton and Prüfer (2012) provide methods for search engine providers to share search logs with each other so they are better able to tab network externalities arising from more data.…”

Big Data and Competition Policy: Market Power, Personalised Pricing and Advertising

“…Some authors like Lerner (2014:37), Lambrecht and Trucker (2015:10) or Sokol and Comerford (2016) submit that the scale economies are low even for tail queries and that there is a diminishing marginal return of data both for head and tail queries. 100 Others like Mc Afee (2015) find that more data matters for tail queries.…”

“…170216_CERRE_CompData_FinalReport 36/61 existence of the feedback loop depends on the relationship between the data and the service quality which in turn depends on the type of data and the type of application at hand. Balto and Lane (2016), Lerner (2014), Lambrecht and Trucker (2015) or Sokol and Comerford (2016) submit that in most cases, the service quality depends only marginally -if at all -of the user data, hence the feedback loop is rarely existent. 107 Moreover, even when the feedback loop exists, if the data collection cost is very small, the effects of the feedback loop will be very small as well.…”

“…Here again, the existence and the intensity of this feedback loop 170216_CERRE_CompData_FinalReport 37/61 needs to be tested on a case-by-case basis and depends on (i) the relationship between the quantity of data and the improvement of ad targeting algorithm, (ii) the relationship between the quality of ad targeting and the attraction of advertisers, and (iii) how the platform invests advertisement revenues and finances service improvement. Lerner (2014:42) and Sokol and Comerford (2016) submit that empirical evidence does not show that a higher number of users necessarily leads to a better monetisation. Moreover, even when the feedback loop exists, if the data collection cost is very small, the effects of the feedback loop will be very small as well.…”

An Economic Policy Perspective on Online Platforms

“…Network effects and discriminatory pricing on several sides of the market can help a platform achieve growth. Sokol & Comersford (2016) provide a comprehensive literature review on this subject. They point out that problems triggered by big data could be addressed through several types of complementary remedies, including antitrust and consumer protection policy tools.…”