Amazon. Alibaba. Facebook. Uber. These types of businesses—known as platforms, or multi-sided markets—are driving the economy more than ever. In an environment where markets, consumers, and technology are ever changing and increasingly interdependent, these businesses, which bring together a number of groups who need each other and make it easy for them to work together, are essential. But platforms operate very differently than traditional, one-sided businesses (like, say, grocery stores), and their logic can seem not only counterintuitive but downright counterproductive.

In Matchmakers, David Evans and Richard Schmalensee, two economists who were among the first to analyze platform businesses and discover their principles, explain the logic of platforms and how to analyze your own opportunities.

About the Authors
David S. Evans is an economist, business adviser, and entrepreneur. He has done pioneering research into the new economics of multisided platforms. He has also consulted for many of the largest multisided platform businesses in the world and served as an adviser to a number of start-up matchmakers. He has co-founded four companies. David also holds academic positions at the University of Chicago Law School and the University College London.

Richard Schmalensee is the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management and Economics, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as the dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management for nine years and as a Member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Dick he is one of the world's leading scholars on the economics of industrial organization and has done pioneering research on the new economics of multisided platforms.