We consider a structural model of demand and supply where firms endogenously offer vertically differentiated products and exercise second-degree price discrimination. We apply this model to the smartphone industry and quantify the welfare effects of price discrimination and competition. We use...

Online communities provide a social sphere for people to share information and knowledge. While information sharing is becoming a ubiquitous online phenomenon, how to ensure information quality or induce quality content, however, remains a challenge due to the anonymity of commentators. This...

56K modems were introduced under two competing incompatible standards. We show the importance of competition between Internet Service Providers in the adoption process. We show that ISP’s were less likely to adopt the technology that more competitors adopted. This result is particularly...

We discuss and compare the remedies in the two cases antitrust cases of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft. The first EU case alleged (i) that Microsoft illegally bundled the Windows Media Player (WMP) with Windows; and (ii) that Microsoft did not provide adequate documentation that would...

We analyze and contrast the US and EU antitrust standards on mixed bundling and tying. We apply our analysis to the US and EU cases against Microsoft on the issue of tying new products (Internet Explorer in the US, and Windows Media Player in the EU) with Windows as well as to cases brought in...

The demand for electronic books (e-books) and the e-book readers are complementary. On the one hand, the emergence of e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle has triggered the recent growth of the e-book market. On the other hand, several issues in the e-book market can affect the future of the...

The Microsoft cases in the United States and in Europe have been influential in determining the contours of the substantive liability standards for dominant firms in US antitrust law and in EC Competition law. The competition law remedies that were adopted, following the finding of liability,...

We examine the price decisions in a vertically differentiated duopoly where the decision to buy a good depends not only upon the intrinsic utility from consuming it but also upon the social attributes (prestige, uniqueness etc.) associated with its consumption. These social attributes are...

Online price comparison agents (shopbots) allow consumers to instantaneously receive price and other information from many online retailers. Online consumer clickstream data from ComScore Inc.demonstrate that consumers are increasingly using shopbots to conduct search. This phenomenon raises...

Positive network externalities can arise when consumers benefit from the consumption of compatible products by other consumers (user-positive consumption externalities) or, alternatively, when they incur costs from the consumption of incompatible products by other consumers (nonuser-negative...