Prof. Fiona Scott Morton Publishes Collection on Digital Market Regulation

In 2019, Fiona Scott Morton, the Theodore Nierenberg Professor of Economics and an expert on competition, led a committee of scholars in producing a report calling for updated antitrust enforcement and regulation of online platforms, under the auspices of the George J. Stigler Center at the University of Chicago. That experience prompted her to undertake a series of studies examining competition in the digital markets dominated by giants like Google and Apple and proposing new regulation.

In a new book, available for download through the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale, Scott Morton collects those studies, written during a period when the issue of digital platform regulation became a subject of headlines around the world. Often, she was responding in real time as regulators and courts sparred with tech firms.

In an interview with Yale Insights about the book, Scott Morton said that the importance of technology in our lives means that a lack of competition in the industry has broad effects on the economy. Services from companies like Apple, Google and Meta “are innovative and offer paths to growth for many businesses,” she said. At the same time, “those businesses are finding they can get to their consumers through only one or two gatekeeper platforms. These markets are extremely concentrated and those platforms extract much of the surplus business that end users would get if there were more competition.”

Effective regulation would have benefits for all of us, she added. “When a new firm with a good idea can enter the market and compete, then consumers get the benefit of that new choice and existing competitors have to work harder to retain their customers—perhaps by cutting prices or innovating.”

Read Digital Platform Regulation: Making Markets Work for People.