Objectives: The guest speaker shows the latest topic of applied economics, and shows how to analyze economic phenomena by economic theory. This seminar makes listeners understand the connection between economics and economic events deeply. The topic is Two-sided platforms. Two-sided platforms are rapid growing business model in the 21st century. Recently, many transactions are intermediated at the platforms. For example, Amazon facilitates interaction between buyers and sellers, Apple provides the operation system (iOS) where users of its hardware device (e.g., iPhone and iPad) and software developers can interact with each other, and Google is an advertising platform that gives firms the opportunity to advertise new products to consumers. The business model of twosided platforms is also applied for sharing economy, such as Grab, Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, etc. The lecture will provide fundamentals on two-sided platforms, including its definition, examples, pricing mechanism, etc. 

Speaker: Asscoc.Prof. Yusuke Zennyo (Kobe University, Japan)

Participants: MBA students and others