This paper presents a model to analyze the development of consumption patterns when there are social interactions among consumers. In particular a consumer in this model recognizes three reference groups: a peer group of similar consumers with whom the consumer wishes to share consumption...

This paper models an economy in which a large number of agents are choosing among several technologies. There is a single, global, market for the technologies but they are subject to localized network externalities in use. We examine the issue of technological standardization, and the...

The paper examines the relationship between network externalities and the value ofthe World-Wide Web. It is shown that value depends on two offsetting effects. First,as the Web grows in size, so existing users gain from the additional content providedby new users. This is the standard concept of...

This paper is a preliminary attempt to map the changing tastes for works of art as manifested in the prices of paintings sold at auction. There are two main goals in this work: first, to describe a space in which we can represent the work of different artists; and second, to describe how...

The impacts of the New Economy are not limited only to recently developed technologies, but involve new opportunities for more “traditional” technologies to develop. Knowledge-based industries, and information technologies in particular, hold both promises and threats in many fields....

This paper discusses recent attempts to codify knowledge through the development of expert systems in several different contexts. This paper argues that in the context of expert systems there is some knowledge that can be codified (turned into an expert system essentially in its entirety), some...

This paper examines the evolution of networks when innovation takes place as a result of agents bringing together their knowledge endowments. Agents freely form pairs creating a globally stable matching. paired agents combine their existing knowledge to create new knowledge. We study the...

A model in which agents on both sides of the market are subject to informational cascades isexamined. In an uncertain environment with asymmetric information agents tend to beoveroptimistic about the state of the world, a result that fits with empirical evidence on financingnew technologies....

Intellectual property rights (IPR) have been created as economic mechanisms to facilitate ongoing innovation by granting inventors a temporary monopoly in return for disclosure of technical know-how. Since the beginning of 1980s, IPR have come under scrutiny as new technological paradigms...

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