"A bold assumption with no citations."

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...

The author of the Yale LJ Note assumed that there is in fact a conscious desire on the part of investors to fund companies pursuing a growth over profit strategy.

If her assumption is correct, then there is no precedent for this type of investor behaviour. That explains the lack of citations.

Here are some quotes from the Note:

"Ironically, the logic that is motivating investors - the idea that it is worth encouraging platforms to bleed money to establish a dominant position and capture the market, at which point these firms will be able to recoup those losses - maps on to the logic underpinning current predatory pricing doctrine. The main issue is how narrowly the law currently conceives of recoupment, which does not account for how Amazon can leverage its multiple lines of business."

"One might dismiss this phenomenon as irrational investor exuberance. But another way to read it is at face value: the reason investors value Amazon and Uber so highly is because they believe these platforms will, eventually, generate huge returns."

More quotes:

"First, the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes highly rational - even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational and therefore implausible."

"Despite the company's history of thin returns, investors have zealously backed it: Amazon's shares trade at over 900 times diluted earnings, making it the most expensive stock in the Standard & Poor's 500.10 As one reporter marveled, "The company barely ekes out a profit, spends a fortune on expansion and free shipping and is famously opaque about its business operations. Yet investors . . . pour into the stock."11 "

"Just as striking as Amazon's lack of interest in generating profit has been investors' willingness to back the company.195 With the exception of a few quarters in 2014, Amazon's shareholders have poured money in despite the company's penchant for losses. On a regular basis, Amazon would report losses, and its share price would soar.196 As one analyst told the New York Times, "Amazon's stock price doesn't seem to be correlated to its actual experience in any way."197"

[Diapers example] "Through its purchase of Quidsi, Amazon eliminated a leading competitor in the online sale of baby products. Amazon achieved this by slashing prices and bleeding money,306 losses that its investors have given it a free pass to incur - and that a smaller and newer venture like Quidsi, by contrast, could not maintain."

"Relatedly, Amazon's expansion into the delivery sector also raises questions about the Chicago School's limited conception of entry barriers. The company's capacity for losses - the permission it has won from investors to show negative profits - has been key in enabling Amazon to achieve outsized growth in delivery and logistics. Matching Amazon's network would require a rival to invest heavily and - in order to viably compete - offer free or otherwise below-cost shipping."

"In interviews with reporters, venture capitalists say there is no appetite to fund firms looking to compete with Amazon on physical delivery.354 In this way, Amazon's ability to sustain losses creates an entry barrier for any firm that does not enjoy the same privilege."

"Given that online platforms operate in markets where network effects and control over data solidify early dominance, a company looking to compete in these markets must seek to capture them. The most effective way is to chase market share and drive out one's rivals - even if doing so comes at the expense of short-term profits, since the best guarantee of long-term profits is immediate growth. Due to this dynamic, striving to maximize market share at the expense of one's rivals makes predation highly rational; indeed, it would be irrational for a business not to frontload losses in order to capture the market. Recognizing that enduring early losses while aggressively expanding can lock up a monopoly, investors seem willing to back this strategy."

"In essence, investors have given Amazon a free pass to grow without any pressure to show profits. The firm has used this edge to expand wildly and dominate online commerce. The idea that investors are willing to fund predatory growth in winner-take-all markets also holds in the case of Uber."

"Though this trend departs from the history on which I focus, my analysis stands given that I am interested in (1) the losses Amazon formerly undertook to establish dominant positions in certain sectors, (2) the investor backing and enthusiasm that Amazon consistently maintained despite these losses, and (3) whether these facts challenge the assumption - embedded in current doctrine - that losing money is only desirable (and hence rational) if followed by recoupment."

"Amazon often flip-flops between showing profits and losses, depending on how aggressively it decides to plow money into big new business bets. Investors have granted the company much wider leeway to do so than other technology companies of its size often receive, because of its history of delivering outsize growth."