We investigate how costly acquisition and exchange of customer-specific information affects industry profit and consumer welfare. Consumers differ in their preferences for competing brands and in their switching costs between brands. Brand-producing firms use their acquired knowledge of...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established rms are...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting sticky consumers who are exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established firms are challenged by new...

This paper models competition between two firms, which provide broadband Internet access in regional markets with different population densities. The firms, an incumbent and an entrant, differ in two ways. First, consumers bear costs when switching to the entrant. Second, the entrant faces a...

Switching costs increase the rigidity of consumers demand and lessen competition between firms, effects that are particularly relevant in the mobile voice services market. This paper characterizes the most important mobility restrictive factors for consumers in this market, presenting specific...

Using a model with switching costs it is shown that firms may have an incentive to set up a new firm supplying to the same market under quite general conditions. The new firm attracts some market share of the founding firm. The start up firm is thus an act of cannibalization. Moreover, entry of...

We analyze Bertrand duopoly competition in markets with network effects and consumer switching costs. Depending on the ratio of switching costs to network effects, our modelerates four different market patterns: monopolization and market sharing which can be either monotone or alternating. A...

Fifty years ago, Punjab embarked on its famous Green Revolution, leading the rest of India in that innovation, and becoming the country's breadbasket. Now its economy and society are struggling by relative, and sometimes even absolute, measures. Using the original Green Revolution as a...

In this paper we utilize discrete choice experiment method to identify and measure switching costs and network effects in mobile telephony in Poland. Based on hypothetical choices consumers make we construct a conditional random parameters multinomial logit model to analyze their preferences. In...

Recent theoretical models of network competition with call externalities demonstrate strategic incentives of incumbent providers to reduce receiver benefits in rival network by excessive off-net pricing. Such anti-competitive pricing practices have a potentially damaging impact on financial...