Research On Regulations And Antitrust Issues Of Online Ride-hailing Market

Ride-hailing is an emerging business format based on Internet technology's information optimization and integration functions.However,while the sharing economy has brought opportunities to the ride-hailing market,many public governance issues have also been exposed.Therefore,basing on an economic perspective,this article is based on the analysis of the technical and economic characteristics and operating models of ride-hailing.According to the pricing issues and algorithmic collusion behavior of the developing process of platforms,safety issues which threaten the driver experience in the mature period,the logical sequence is aimed at proposing regulations and antitrust strategies that are in line with the current status of ride-hailing.Firstly,basing on the theory of consumer surplus and antitrust,qualitative and quantitative analysis was used to study the price war of the platform's low price strategy and the high price of acquaintances.The research on the “subsidy war” in the ride-hailing market includes the reasons for frequent price wars,the identification of predatory pricing,and the analysis of welfare effects.Similarly,research on big data“killing maturity” of the online ride-hailing platform includes identification of maturity killing phenomenon,motivation,and welfare effect analysis,and compares three scenarios: market equilibrium with no charge and no markup,the market equilibrium of platform price increase without market killing or with market killing.Research shows that the price war in the ride-hailing market is predatory pricing in antitrust regulation.In addition,short-term behavior of hidden price discrimination is helpful to expand consumer groups,and improve social welfare,while it will lead to“double loss” between platforms and passengers.In this regard,this article proposes economic regulations and antitrust strategies,such as data security supervision,the establishment of a price freeze period,and so on.Secondly,basing on the bilateral market and antitrust theory,the mathematical collusion model is used to study the algorithmic collusion problem of the ride-hailing market.The study starts with the economic effects of algorithmic pricing and focuses on examining horizontal price collusion among platforms.Considering the symmetry of the platform and the ownership structure of the user,four models are established,include the symmetric platform where the driver and passenger are all single-homed,the symmetric platform where passengers are partially multi-homed and drivers are single-homed,the asymmetric platform where the driver and driver are single-homed,and asymmetric platform with multiple passenger parts and single-homed driver,in order to compare the welfare effects of the parties before and after the collusion,and use the economic perspective to explain the joint “price increase” behavior of the platform and the driver and the general “premium” phenomenon between the platforms.The results show that the platform has an incentive to implement collusion in order to jointly plunder consumer surplus,and as the proportion of multi-homing increases,platform collusion will gain more producer surplus.Therefore,this article puts forward strategic suggestions for adopting technological governance and antitrust policies.Finally,basing on the service blueprint method,the safety problem of the online ride-hailing market is studied with the “Yueqing hitch-hike case”.Through the description of the service process of ride-hailing,the paper analyzes the source of the security problems of multiple subjects from the macro,meso and micro levels,mainly includes the lack of government regulation in the new business format,the market's own issues,and the inherent defects of platform companies and drivers.In order to ensure the reliability of the research,it conducts an economic analysis on the case.The results show that moral hazard and supply elasticity of drivers,misplacement of platform supervision,passenger foot voting and limited rationality,contradiction between data sharing and privacy protection,data regulatory dilemma,and inadequate credit system construction influence security issues.In this regard,this paper proposes a repeated game constraint mechanism for multiple parties,as well as social regulatory strategies for technical governance and credit system construction.