The paper proposes an analytical framework for comparing different business models for producing information goods and digital services. It is based on three dimensions that also refer to contrasted literature: the economics of matching, the economics of assembling and the economics of knowledge...

Over the past decade, the distribution/growth of information technology (IT) has transformed the organization of economic activities. IT has enhanced economic agents' capabilities to collect and process information, to coordinate and manage transactions. Although IT threatens the activities of...

Efficiency arguments explain why commercial intermediaries exist and will continue to be involved in the exchanges despite the spread of digital networks. Commercial intermediaries provide producers and consumers with a set of information, logistic, securization and insurance (and liquidity)...

Technology licensing provides innovators with the opportunity to substantially leverage their market expansion. But licensing also exposes valuable knowledge at appropriation and more generally to opportunism since it generates ex-post mutual interdependence. The long-term performance of the...

This outstanding book presents new original contributions from some of the world's leading economists including Ronald Coase, Douglass C. North, Masahiko Aoki, Oliver E. Williamson and Harold Demsetz. It demonstrates the extent and depth of the New Institutional Economics research programme...

France's early adoption of Minitel and EDI in the 1980s was both a stimulus and an inhibitor to Internet-based e-commerce. It hindered the adoption of the Internet, but it also created the conditions for a rapid catch up when France switched to the Internet in 1997. The French were already open...

On the basis of an in depth analysis of the flow of revenues within the music industry and of the emerging practices, we attempt to understand the logic at play in the current evolution of the structure of the industry. We claim that the record companies used to play a role that was useful for...

This paper provides new evidence on the contractual governance of technology licensing agreements. Using an international sample of licensing contracts, we explore how contracts are designed to deal with specific contractual risks. In particular, we comparatively assess the influences of...

This paper presents a new methodology aimed at building institutional indicators. Up to now, all the available indicators have relied on an analysis of the supply of legal protection. Conversely we propose here a methodology based on the analysis of the demand for legal protection, as it is...