Der Marktstrukturmissbrauch in der Plattformökonomie

With reference to ordoliberal principles, the author develops an approach with which the legal concept of market structure abuse can be applied to cases in the platform economy. The starting point is an analysis of the economic foundations of digital platforms. From this, the thesis emerges that network and data scale effects as central structural features of digital platform markets lead to considerable information asymmetries between established platforms and all other actors. Against this background, the author examines various abuse proceedings of the European Commission and the German Federal Cartel Office against digital platforms and shows that these could be categorized under the case group of market structure abuse.