As online information availability for products and services is increasing and as buyers engage in more online search prior to purchase decisions, it is becoming more important for firms to know when to invest to reduce buyer uncertainty. This article argues that today's firms should view...

In Cournot's model of complements, the producers of A and B are both monopolists. This paper extends Cournot's model to allow for competition between complements on one side of the market. Consider two complements, A and B, where the A+B bundle is valuable only when purchased together. Good A is...

This paper provides a thorough analysis of oligopolistic markets with positive demand-side network externalities and perfect compatibility. The minimal structure imposed on the model primitives is such that industry output increases in a firm's rivals' total output as well as in the expected...

We analyze a duopoly game in which products are initially differentiated in variety and quality. Each consumer has a most preferred variety and a quality valuation. Customization provides ideal varieties but has no effect on product qualities. The firms first choose whether to customize their...

The success of the Kindle e-book platform and the increased popularity of e-books among members of the reading community have attracted extensive interest in the high-tech industry. New platform providers are jumping in the market to compete for device and e-book sales. In this paper, we model...

In this paper, we study how the presence of a news aggregator affects competition among (horizontally differentiated) newspapers in the Internet. For this purpose, we build a model of multiple issues which allows each newspaper to choose quality on each issue. Our model provides a micro...

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...

We compare four approaches to network neutrality and network management regulation in a two-sided market model: (i) no variations in Quality of Service and no price discrimination; (ii) variations in Quality of Service but no price discrimination; (iii) variations in Quality of Service and price...

This paper empirically analyzes how the use of vertical price restraints has impacted retail prices in the market for e-books. In 2010 five of the six largest publishers simultaneously adopted the agency model of book sales, allowing them to directly set retail prices. This led the Department of...

We study merger waves in vertically related industries where firms can engage in both vertical and horizontal mergers. Even though any individual merger would have been profitable, firms may refrain from merging for fear of negative impacts from other mergers. When they do merge, however, they...