Since bundlesprovide price discountsto customers and have lock-in effects forbusinessesin the communicationssector, the number of bundlesubscribersisrapidly growing in many countries,including Korea.The consumerwelfareand marketing effects of bundleshavebeen welldocumented. Existing literature,...

Modeling consumer choice in different areas has lead to an increase use of discrete choice models. Probit or Multinomial Logit Models are often the base of further empirical research of consumer choice. In some of these models the equations to solve have no closed-form expression. They include...

In many markets, homogenous goods and services are sold both by large global frms and small local frms. Surprisingly, the large frms charge, often substantially, higher prices. Examples include hotels, airlines, and coffee shops. This paper provides a parsimonious model that can account for...

This paper examines the consequences of introducing mobile number portability (MNP). As MNP allows consumers to keep their telephone number when switching providers, it reduces consumers' switching costs. However, MNP may also cause consumer ignorance if telephone numbers no longer identify...

This paper examines the consequences of introducing mobile number portability (MNP). As MNP allows consumers to keep their telephone number when switching providers, it reduces consumers' switching costs. However, MNP may also cause consumer ignorance if telephone numbers no longer identify...

This paper proposes a simple method for estimating the lock-in effects of switching costs from firm-level data. We compare the behavior of already contracted consumers to the behavior of new consumers as the latter can serve as contrafactual to the former. In panel regressions on firms' incoming...

We show that small switching costs can have surprisingly dramatic effects in infinitely repeated games if these costs are large relative to payoffs in a single period. This shows that the results in Lipman and Wang [2000] do have analogs in the case of infinitely repeated games. We also discuss...

This article examines the impact of customer reward programs on the competitive outcome in duopolistic markets. We argue that loyalty discounts for repeat customers constitute a commitment device beneficial to suppliers rather than customers. Analyzing a two-period Bertrand model we show that...

We compare two options of integrating discrete working time choice of heterogenous households into a general equilibrium model. The first, known from the literature, produces household heterogeneity through a working time preference parameter. We contrast this with a model that directly...