Market digital platforms and economic inequality

Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrozavodsk, Russia

^* Corresponding author: suharev@narod.ru

Abstract

The article studies the issues associated with the emergence and widespread distribution of such new systems for the market economy as global digital trading platforms, as well as their impact on economic inequality. The paper proposes the systematic analysis of the organization of these platforms, on the basis of which it is concluded that their main effect is associated with a significant reduction in transaction costs (by one or two orders of magnitude) when searching for goods, making transactions and paying for them. Statistics show an increase in economic inequality, though, a priori we could expect a reduction in inequality as a result of small and medium-sized businesses gaining access to global markets.