Does it make sense to analyse a two-sided market as a multi-choice game?

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the model of multi-choice two-sided market games related to two-sided market situations. Associated with them we study whether the disaggregate management of the individual units of goods provide better insights, by means of set valued solution concepts like the core that is widely used in classical and multi-choice two-sided games. We introduce the Owen core and the pairwise egalitarian contribution set in this context and analyse whether classic and multi-choice two-sided market models are equivalents in terms of these set valued solution concepts from the point of view of aggregate payoffs. The answer to this analysis is that in aggregate terms there are no significant differences between the multi-choice approach and the standard approach. However, they are not equivalent from a disaggregate perspective.