We introduce an analytical framework close to the canonical model of platform competition investigated by Rochet and Tirole (2006) to study pricing decisions in two-sided markets when two or more platforms are needed simultaneously for the successful completion of a transaction. The model...

As the network externality in an industrial organization has been widely discussed in recent years, many researchers in the field have noted a particular type of market, the so-called two-sided market. In a two-sided market, two or more groups of agents such as buyers and sellers interact while...

This thesis strives to offer new insights in two main areas. First, in the well-researched domain of payment cards chapters 2 and 3 investigate an aspect that has hitherto been scantly examined, namely, the fact that merchant usage fees differ substantially among merchant sectors. Additionally,...

In this paper we study mergers in two-sided industries. While mergers have been studied extensively in traditional industries, and there is a large and rapidly evolving literature on two-sided markets, there has been little work empirically examining mergers in these markets. We present a model...

This paper examines the pricing of mobile applications when application providers can either supply consumers directly or through a mobile platform (such as a smart phone or tablet). It is demonstrated that when platform access (i.e., purchasing a device) takes place in advance of application...

There are many examples of markets involving two groups of participants who need to interact via intermediaries. Moreover, these intermediaries usually have to compete for business from both groups. Examples include academic publishing (where journals facilitate the interaction between authors...

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...

In media markets, consumers spread their attention to several outlets, increasingly so as consumption migrates online. The traditional framework for studying competition among media outlets rules out this behavior by assumption. We propose a new model that allows consumers to choose multiple...