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Digital platforms are powerful intermediaries that play an important role in shaping today’s economies and societies. In the eyes of both the public and regulators, the platform economy is defined by dominant companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM) – globally operating tech giants that each operate multiple platforms. These large platform companies are known for building and exploiting large indirect network effects (the more users, the higher the value of the platform for other users). They offer users convenient and now ubiquitous products that have become the infrastructures for the digital economy (such as app stores, search engines, messengers and social networks). Almost all the global platforms were created and are still headquartered in the United States and, more recently, China.o European platforms pursue the same business models as GAFAM, just on a smaller scale? Do European platforms mimic how GAFAM compete?This report is a first attempt to shed light on these questions. Focusing on e-commerce, food delivery, health and care, and social networking, we show that Europe is in fact a plural powerhouse when it comes to creating, delivering and capturing value in these industries. This report presents findings from the research project Platform Alternatives, based at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford. The project is funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation. The authors acknowledge inputs from Lena Starke.

Digitalisation and the use of algorithms have raised concerns over the future of work, the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. In this article, we draw on 70 interviews in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of gig economy platforms in producing a novel form of reputational insecurity. This insecurity is generated by platforms disrupting the traditional operation of industry reputation in freelance markets. We highlight three areas of transformation (recognition, power relations, and transparency) in which platforms disrupt the social regulation of reputation and thus algorithmically amplify uncertainty. We also detail how workers individually and collectively attempt to re-embed reputation within interpersonal relations to reduce this novel insecurity.

Digital labor markets are structured around tasks and not around fixed- or long-term employment contracts. We study the consequences of the granularization of work for digital micro workers. To address this question, we combine interview data from active online micro workers and online data on open projects scraped from Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform to study how the digital micro workers choose which tasks they work on. We find evidence for preferential attachment: workers prefer to attach themselves to experienced employers who are known to offer high quality projects. In addition, workers also clearly prefer long series of repeatable tasks over one-off tasks, even when one-off tasks pay considerably more. We thus see a re-emergence of certain types of organizational structure.

The global workforce is urged to constantly reskill, as technological change favours particular new skills while making others redundant. But which skills are most marketable and have a sustainable demand? We propose a model for skill evaluation that attaches a market value to a set of 962 digital skills based on near real-time online labour market data. We demonstrate that the value of a specific skill is strongly determined by complementarity - that is with how many other high-value skills a competency can be combined. Most importantly, we show that the value of a skill is relative, as it depends on the capacities it is combined with. For most skills, their value is highest when used in combination with skills of the same type. We illustrate our model with a set of AI skills that are particularly valuable because of their strong complementarities, and also because of the significant increase in their demand in recent years. Finally, we contrast our skill premia with automation probabilities and find that some skills are very susceptible to automation despite their high market value. The model and metrics of our work can inform the policy and practice of digital re-skilling to reduce labour market mismatches. In cooperation with online platforms and education providers, researchers and policy makers should consider using this blueprint to provide learners with personalised skill recommendations that complement their existing capacities and fit their occupational background., Comment: 40 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables

The Strategic Guide to Responsible Platform Business highlights alternative strategies that platform organisations can pursue to acknowledge and mitigate platform capitalism’s problematic tendencies. While it is informative for policymakers and civil society, the Guide is mainly meant to be a resource for decision-makers in European platform firms. It outlines key ethical concerns and trade-offs, to then point to possible responses that have been tried by platforms operating in the market. The Guide discusses five domains of responsibility that are relevant for any platform business: (1) responsibility towards active users, (2) wider societal and environmental impacts, (3) algorithmic management and display of information, (4) interoperability, data sharing and standards, and (5) governance and accountability. For each domain, three condensed alternative strategies are presented and illustrated by examples of actual implementations by European platform firms as well as in-depth case studies. The Guide is an effort to push platform businesses to use their initiative to learn from their peers about how to act more sustainably. As such, it complements regulation that defines the contours but not the specifics of what responsible platform businesses ought to do. Ultimately, the Guide is both a call to platform businesses to be the best corporate citizens they can possibly be and a resource to support them in achieving this ambition.

Online platforms play an important role in many European industries, from media and advertising to travel and retail. They allow buyers and sellers of goods and services to find each other, trust each other, and trade with each other. They are likely to be significant gateways for many European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to global markets. Due to their pivotal position, there is a risk that they may in some cases also misuse their gatekeeper position. As in any market, public policies could help maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of the online platform economy. The European Union and its Member States are already engaged in such policy making, in domains ranging from consumer protection and fair trading practices to competition and media law. However, a challenge to policy makers and researchers is that there is a lack of data on many aspects of platform companies' economic role and behaviour. Traditional economic statistics, national accounts, and market data are not geared towards observing intermediaries that may produce no goods and hold no stocks themselves, yet still play a central role determining in how they are allocated. The objective of this report is to identify indicators that could be used to monitor the online platform economy for the purposes of policy making and, where considered necessary, further regulation, and to recommend corrective actions in areas where no indicators are available to ensure such data becomes available in the future. We break down the problem of observation into three broad areas that cut across policy domains. The first area is the economic significance of platforms in the context of the broader economy. Within this area, three topics for measurement are considered: the volume of trade mediated by platforms; platform size and importance; and data on data. We recommend that statistical agencies should be empowered to collect data on trade mediated by platforms, for instance in travel and e-commerce. Platform size and “data on data” are active areas of research, where not just new data sources but also more conceptual development is needed; we offer some suggestions in this regard. The second area of observation is the economic power that platforms have over their users. Within this area, three topics for measurement are considered: business dependence on platforms; platform’s share of consumer attention; and acquisitions as competitive strategy. We find that, from a business strategy perspective, business dependence of platforms is conceptually quite well understood, but good data sources and data are lacking. We recommend that both industry associations and statistical agencies invest into collecting suitable data. Platforms’ share of consumer attention is still an area for further research. Beside the standard approaches, we are suggesting more alternative ways, such as measurement via “big data” web traffic. Regarding acquisitions as competitive strategy, including “killer acquisitions” designed to pre-empt future competition, we suggest automated market intelligence data feeds such as an additional way to add puzzle to a jigsaw. However, such data is likely incomplete, and we recommend that the EU considers new obligations on major platforms to report M&A activity to the European Commission, for ex-post research and monitoring purposes, in particular when these M&A are not captured by thresholds in the applicable EU and national merger rules and may therefore never be assessed against their compliance with applicable competition rules. We also propose a number of research questions for furthering the understanding of acquisitions in platform competition and policy. The final area of observation covered in this report relates to the considered consequences of platforms’ economic power: how to measure platform volatility; platform transparency; and other potentially problematic and thus policy-relevant practices. The topic of platform transparency would benefit from further conceptual research to understand for instance the tradeoffs between a public’s need for transparency of powerful actors vs. legitimate private business interests of a platform company. As for other potentially problematic practices, the new EU P2B Regulation that applies as of 12 July 2020 will create new transparency obligations on platforms to disclose data on their internal complaint-handling systems; we recommend that this data be analysed with a view to identifying and assessing any need for further public policy intervention. These initial findings and recommendations were tested in a stakeholder consultation process that helped us to verify the indicators and the overall framework for monitoring the online platform economy for policy and regulation in the future.