Bruegel Event Recordings

In the recent years “free” products and services have exploded in popularity. Social networks, web-based email, news services, mapping programs, video and music streaming, search engines - all are now widely offered to customers at zero prices. In fact, though often labelled as such, many of these products are not free. Consumers are exchanging their data for them. Only recently competition policy practitioners have started to adequately account for the unique attributes of zero-price markets. At this event Prof. Daniel Rubinfeld presented his research on how the abundance of zero price services has brought to the forefront issues regarding their welfare effects and the appropriate regulatory and enforcement tools.