Do firms have proper incentives to invest in electronic coordination? We discuss this question in an oligopoly model with a local firm and a distant competitor that may reduce transport costs by investing in electronic coordination. In a two-stage game with investment in the first stage and...

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyse how his decision...

The formally related phenomena of learning curve and network effects are quite common in oligopolistic markets. In this context the present paper discusses the incentives of a technological leader to share its exclusive technology with potential competitors. An alliance may be preferable because...

What is the appropriate degree of centralization in the context of industrial policy? The basic advantage of centralization results from internalization of external effects. While most of the literature stresses the superior information of regional authorities as a countervailing force, the...

Electronic coordination may drastically reduce transport costs, especially for digital or digitalizable products where local markets may actually shrink to a point in space. In the present paper we use a model with differentiated products to analyze the impact of declining transport costs on...