This paper analyses oligopolies using the Cournot/Stackelberg framework, but allowing some firms to be pursueing aims other than profit maximisation. The existence of even a single output maximising firm can have dramatic effects on outputs, prices and welfare, even if such a firms faces...

In this paper, we investigate the impact of economic incentives on the international supply of big-screen movies. More particularly, we also study the impact of a 1998 increase in the term of copyright on U.S. movie production.

This paper argues that advertising should be regarded as a transaction between a consumer and a firm that potentially generates a mutual benefit. We develop that there exists a problem of adverse selection, however, which makes it impossible to establish direct markets for advertising. The media...

This article looks at the effects of office mechanisation in greater detail by describing data processing innovations in major building societies during the dawn of the computer era. Reference to similar developments in clearing banks, industrial and computer organisations provides evidence as...

The present paper develops a basic framework for evaluating and optimizing profits in a business operation. In developing a business we are often faced with an infinity of choices ranging from what products or services to sell and what customers to target to how to structure and manage the...

A firm must decide whether to launch a new product. A launch implies considerable fixed costs, so the firm would like to assess downstream demand before it decides. We study under which conditions a potential buyer would be willing to reveal his willingness to pay under different pricing...

A number of products that display positive network effects are used in variable quantities by heterogeneous customers. Examples include corporate operating systems, infrastructure software, web services and networking equipment. In many of these contexts, the magnitude of network effects are...

This paper analyses market competition between two different types of credit card platforms: not-for-profit associations and proprietary systems. The main focus is on the role of the interchange fee set by not-for-profit platforms. We show that when the interchange fee is set so as to maximise...

Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

A fundamental aspect of any open payment system is the interchange fee that is paid from the merchant's bank to the cardholder's bank. Using a model in which there is partial participation by heterogeneous consumers and merchants, this paper characterizes the output maximizing, profit maximizing...