| Based on the two-sided market theory,this thesis constructs a mathematical model to study the interconnection behavior between Internet platforms,and puts forward corresponding suggestions for China ’s interconnection supervision based on the relevant policy analysis of other economies.China ’s existing Internet open platforms mainly include : Sina Weibo open platform,Baidu AI open platform,Alibaba open platform,Tencent open platform,etc.However,these open platforms are more at the stage of opening their own services,and the level of openness between platforms is not high.At the end of October 2021,the State Administration of Market Supervision issued the "Guidelines for the Implementation of the Main Responsibility of Internet Platforms(Draft for Comments)" and began to promote the interconnection between Internet platforms.The interconnection between platforms includes many aspects.The first is link opening,including content sharing and link automatic jump platform.The second is the interoperability between Internet platforms,which will involve the sharing and opening of data;the third is the opening of the whole ecology.China ’s current regulatory policy only refers to the realization of interconnection in stages and steps,and there is no clearer indication of the level of opening up the external chain.Therefore,it is very necessary to consider the network effect and competition effect brought by open external chain and other aspects of interconnection from the perspective of game theory,and to study the current situation of supervision.The second chapter of this thesis combs the relevant literature.Firstly,it expounds the two-sided market theory,and focuses on the differences and connections between compatibility,platform openness and platform interconnection.It discusses and compares the classic literature of platform interconnection and interoperability in detail.Finally,it points out the differences between the relevant literature and the research of this thesis and the inspiration for the research of this thesis.The third chapter is to extend the Cournot model constructed by Chen(2011)and Toshimitsu(2017)in unilateral markets to bilateral markets,analyze and discuss the impact of mutual openness between platforms on both users and platforms themselves in the general market environment(the market may not be fully covered),and whether the opening of the platform can bring higher efficiency to the society.Through the theoretical model,it is found that the cost of users joining the platform will increase and the cost of content providers joining the platform will decrease when the platform is open,that is,users on side A can(partially)access content providers on side B.However,as the degree of openness φ increases,the remaining users and content providers that join the platform will increase;the relationship between platform profit and openness level is uncertain,depending on the market environment in which the platform is located;the total social welfare increases with the level of openness.In the fourth chapter,based on the Hotelling model,the exogenous and endogenous price competition models of the open level are constructed respectively,and the opening of the oligopoly platform under the full market coverage environment is studied.It is found that in the symmetric equilibrium,the more open the platform is to the user side,the greater the surplus of the A-side users joining the platform,the smaller the surplus of the content provider,and the platform profit and the total social welfare increase with the increase of the openness.When Platform 2 is completely closed to Platform 1,Platform1 will choose to be completely open to Platform 2 based on the principle of profit maximization.After full openness,the total surplus of users and content providers joining the platform will decrease,and the change of total social welfare is uncertain,depending on the market environment in which the platform is located.The fifth chapter of this paper is to put forward corresponding policy recommendations for the effective supervision of interconnection.The main recommendations are as follows :(1)If the regulatory authorities consider improving the overall social welfare,they should guide or promote the openness of platforms and subsidize content providers.(2)When regulating the competition of the Internet platform,the regulatory authorities should consider carefully to prevent the collusion between the platforms in order to improve their own profits and choose to fully open,increase the price of the content provider side,damage their interests;(3)Regulators should balance the benefits of connectivity with the potential downsides of long-term investment incentives;(4)China ’s governance model should be selected on the basis of comparing the different governance structures of the EU and the US;(5)Advocate and strengthen industry self-discipline.The innovations of this thesis are :(1)Discuss the cross-border network externalities of the platform in the context of the Cournot quantity competition model.In the past,the literature on cross-border network externalities is mostly analyzed by constructing the Hotelling model in the context of two-sided markets.In the third chapter of this thesis,based on the Cournot quantity competition model,the linear inverse demand function of the platform on different sides is set up respectively.The existence of crossborder network externalities affects the choice of the number of users and the level of openness of the platform,and the corresponding equilibrium solution is obtained in the case of symmetric equilibrium.(2)The key variable of platform openness level is endogenized in the bilateral Hotelling model,which may contribute new knowledge to the research field of platform compatibility decision.Many related literatures set the compatibility level as an exogenous variable,and compare static analysis such as the relationship between consumer attribution behavior and platform compatibility decision,the change of user surplus before and after platform compatibility,etc.The endogenous mathematical model of openness constructed in this thesis is more in line with the reality of China,and may contribute new knowledge to the research field of platform compatibility decision-making.(3)Provide theoretical support and directional suggestions for the effective supervision of interconnection. |
