When firms can identify their past customers, they may use information about purchase histories in order to price discriminate. We present a model with a monopolist and a continuum of heterogeneous consumers, where consumers can opt out from being identified, possibly at a cost. We find that...

The increasing pervasiveness of the Internet has dramatically changed the way that consumers shop for goods. Consumer-generated product reviews have become a valuable source of information for customers, who read the reviews and decide whether to buy the product based on the information...

Understanding the process of software adoption is of paramount importance to software start-ups. We study a monopolistic seller’s optimal consumer network structure formation (seeding, segmentation, sequencing, and pricing strategies) under network effects. We demonstrate the importance of...

We consider a heretofore unexplored explanation for why platforms, such as Internet service providers, might impose download limits on content consumers: doing so increases the degree to which those consumers view content providers’ products as substitutes. This, in turn, intensifies the...

In this paper we investigate optimal pricing strategies for an online grocery retailer who derives its profits from delivery fees and grocery sales. We base our theoretical framework upon the well-established work of Schmalensee (1981) in two-part pricing, while allowing for repeat purchase...

We develop and analyze a model of pricing for digital products with discontinuous supply functions. This characterizes a number of information technology-based products and services for which variable increases in demand are fulfilled by the addition of "blocks" of computing or network...

We test the effect of entry on the tariff choices of incumbent cellular firms. We relate the change in the breadth of calling plans between 1996, when incumbents enjoyed a duopoly market, and 1998, when incumbents faced increased competition from personal communications services (PCS) firms....

We discuss salient economic aspects of the Internet, including the possible abolition of net neutrality by local broadband access networks as well as potential incompatibilities and degradation of connectivity in the Internet backbone.

Pricing of Internet access has been characterized by two properties. Parties are directly billed only by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) through which they connect to the Internet and the ISP charges them on the basis of the amount of information transmitted rather than its content. These...

Previous studies suggested that a monopoly durable goods seller can use leasing to effectively avoid the time-inconsistent problem raised by Coase Conjecture. This paper extends those previous works by examining the monopoly seller’s selling and leasing strategy for a special type of durable...