Public “Beta” launches have become a preferred route of entry into the markets for new software products and web site based services. While beta testing of novel products is nothing new, typically such tests were done by experts within firm boundaries. What makes public beta testing so...

We study oligopolistic firms' incentives to share customer information about past purchase history in a situation where firms are uncertain about whether a particular consumer considers the product offerings complements or substitutes. By addressing this new type of behavior-based price...

There is a substantial number of cases where the a priori relationship between products is not at all clear in the sense that although apparent to be clear substitutes may turn out to be in fact complements, or vice-versa. This paper aims to study the relationship between fixed and mobile...

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...

This paper investigates the importance of network effects in the demand for ethanol-compatible vehicles and the supply of ethanol fuel retailers. An indirect network effect, or positive feedback loop, arises in this context due to spatially-dependent complementarities in the availability of...

The phenomenon of sponsored search advertising where advertisers pay a fee to Internet search engines to be displayed alongside organic (non-sponsored) web search results is gaining ground as the largest source of revenues for search engines. Using a unique panel dataset of several hundred...

In this article I analyze the effects of a recent reform intended to decrease switching costs in the cellular industry. The reform, implemented in Chile in 2012, allowed cell phone users to switch operators without any contract restriction while keeping their wireless number. Its aim was the...

I discuss the design and implementation of a SSNIP test in order to identify the relevant market in a media market. I argue that in such a two-sided market the traditional SSNIP test cannot be applied as it is usually conceived but rather should be modified in order to take into account indirect...

We discuss and evaluate the incentives for vertical expansion and vertical mergers in the payments systems industry paying particular attention to the implications of the existence of network effects in this industry. We assess the incentives of large merchants to extend vertically into payments...

The recent years have exhibited a burst in the amount of collaborative activities among firms selling complementary products. This paper aims at providing a rationale for such a large extent of collaboration ties among complementors. To this end, we analyze a game in which the two producers of a...