Abstract Firms can exploit consumers' mistakes when facing complex purchasing decision problems but Gaudeul and Sugden (2012) argue that if at least some consumers disregard offers that are difficult to compare with others then firms will be forced into adopting common ways to present their...

This paper deals with the role of reciprocation in the formation of individuals' social networks. We follow the activity of a panel of bloggers over more than a year and investigate the extent to which initiating a relation brings about its reciprocation. We adapt a standard capital investment...

Abstract Consumers make mistakes when facing complex purchasing decision problems but if at least some consumers disregard any offers that is difficult to compare with others then firms will adopt common ways to present their offers and thus make choice easier. We design an original experiment...

Blogs differ from other media in that authors are usually not remunerated and inscribe themselves in communities of similarly minded individuals. Bloggers value reciprocal attention, interaction with other bloggers and information from reading other blogs; they value being read but also writing...

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free...

I consider a Vickrey-Salop model of spatial product differentiation with quasi-linear utility functions and contrast two modes of production, the proprietary model where entrepreneurs sell software to the users, and the open source model where users participate in software development. I show...

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the...

Behavioural and industrial economists have argued that, because of cognitive limitations, consumers are liable to make sub-optimal choices in complex decision problems. Firms can exploit these limitations by introducing spurious complexity into tariff structures, weakening price competition....

Those lecture notes cover the basics of a course in microeconomic theory for MSc students in Economics. They were developed over five years of teaching MSc Economic Theory I in the School of Economics at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. The lectures differ from the standard fare in...