[todd-davies]

Yes, it's a bit of a problem for the field! Like many aspects of antitrust, predatory pricing applies cleanly for an industrial-era economy but as you point out, it's less clear how to translate it into the context of 21st century informational capitalism. A significant amount of legal and economic research in the field is asking these kinds of questions, and the answers are still forthcoming.

[tqi]

Got it, that makes sense that its not well established. I saw from your profile that this is actually something you are studying, which is very cool! I've always wondered what the examples of this (predatory pricing -> drive out competition -> jack up prices) happening in practice are? I know Uber is the ur-example but that feels different from something like pure a saas?

I wonder if as long as there is VC money out there, the viability of this strategy is limited because the moment incumbents (even ones with overwhelming market share) try to jack up prices, they immediately create an opportunity for a startup to undercut them.

[todd-davies]

I can't think of a good example for a sass product. I'm sure it goes on though and I'm always interested in hearing about examples!

A similar strategy which seems to be quite common these days is to cross-subsidise, which is when a firm sells one product at an artificially low price by using profits it makes from selling another product. If we think about cross-subsidisation, then lots of multi-product sass offerings might fall under our scope. That said, cross-subsidisation has economic benefits, so it's not clear-cut.

As I said, to properly adjust to digital markets I think antitrust will have to identify new patterns of harm and invent new metrics to measure them. Predatory pricing (and similar offences) will always be useful, but they might just not fit well onto these kinds of markets.