The effects of (private, small-scale) piracy on the pricing behavior of producers of information goods are studied within a unified model of vertical differentiation. Although information goods are assumed to be perfectly horizontally differentiated, demands are interdependent because the...

We start by using various economic and pedagogical concepts to understand the specificities of MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses) platforms. We then discuss how the private provision of MOOCs, seen as pure public goods, can be sustained. Based on the theory of multisided platforms, we analyse...

The basic idea of crowdfunding is to raise external finance from a large audience (the “crowd”), where each individual provides a very small amount, instead of soliciting a small group of sophisticated investors. The paper develops a model that associates crowdfunding with pre-ordering and...

In a successive vertical oligopoly, a set of "sellers" produce some input to be transformed into a final product by a set of "buyers". On this two-sided market, a firm's profit increases with the number of firms of the other type and decreases with the number of firms of its own type. We examine...

When firms can supply several separate markets, collusion can take two forms. Either firms establish production quotas on all the markets, or they share markets. This paper compares production quotas and market sharing agreements in a Cournot duopoly where firms incur a fixed cost for serving...

We analyze whether and how the fact that products are not sold on free, public platforms but on competing for-profit platforms affects sellers? investment incentives. Investments in cost reduction, quality, or marketing measures are here the joint and coordinated efforts by sellers. We show...

The effects of (private, small-scale) copying on the pricing behavior of producers of information goods are studied within a unified model of vertical differentiation. Although information goods are assumed to be perfectly horizon tally differentiated, demands are interdependent because the...

This paper analyzes the role of yardstick competition for improving political decisions. We examine how performance comparisons across jurisdictions affect the agency problem resulting from uncertainty about politicians (adverse selection) and their policies (moral hazard). We study two forms of...