A case in point is the economics of two-sided markets, which involve competition between platforms whose principal “product” consists in connecting two categories of users, who then offer each other network benefits. When markets are two-sided, many of the standard assumptions of antitrust analysis no longer hold: market entry can be bad for consumers, exclusive contracts can increase the number of firms in a market, and pricing below cost may not be predatory.
一个例子是双边市场经济学，其中涉及不同平台之间的竞争，这些平台的主要“产品”在于连接两个类别的用户，而这些用户随后为彼此提供网络收益。当市场是双边的时候，许多反垄断分析的标准假设就不复存在了：新企业进入市场或许反而对消费者不利，排他性的契约反而增加了市场中的企业数量，而低于成本的定价也不一定是有侵略性的。