Customers of the online music label/store Magnatune can pay what they want for albums as long as the payment is within a given price range ($5-$18). On average, customers pay significantly more than they have to. We ran an online survey and collected responses from 227 frequent Magnatune...

We apply the property rights theory of Grossman-Hart-Moore in the music industry and study the optimal allocation of copyright between the artists who create music and the labels who promote and distribute it. Digital technology opens up a role for new intermediaries. We find that entry of...

Bloggers devote significant time not only producing content for others to read, watch or listen to, but also paying attention to and engaging in interactions with other bloggers. We hope to throw light not only on the factors that gain bloggers significant readership and lively interactions with...

This paper presents a theory of vertically interrelated markets of identical fixed size under implementation of positive indirect network effects. By introducing two Salop circles, a two-sided market model is provided, where intermediaries of differentiated copyrights for intellectual property,...

The paper analyses the payment behaviour of customers of the online music label Magnatune. Customers may pay what they want for albums, as long as the payment is within a given price range ($5-$18). Magnatune’s comprehensive pre-purchase access facilitates music discovery and allows an...

The emergence of Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) business models as a successful alternative to conventional uniform pricing brings up new questions related to the task of pricing. We investigate the eect of a reduction of privacy on consumers' purchase decisions (whether to buy, and if so how much to...

This paper investigates the factors that explain the level of technical efficiency of a firm. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 35,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2004. We estimate the technical efficiency of the...

If the future market wage is uncertain, engaging in long-term employment is risky, with the risk depending on how regulated the labor market is. In our experiment long-term employment can result either from offering long-term contracts or from repeatedly and mutually opting for rematching....