A reduction in search costs is generally believed to make markets more competitive. However, the effect may be mitigated or amplified if consumers must pay costs for switching products. This paper investigates how search costs affect prices in the presence of switching costs using U.S. domestic...

A reduction in search costs is generally believed to make markets more competitive. However, the effect may be mitigated or amplified if consumers must pay costs for switching products. This paper investigates how search costs affect prices in the presence of switching costs using U.S. domestic...

Sellers sometimes offer goods for sale under both a regular price and a discount for group purchase if the consumer group reaches some minimum size. This selling practice, which we term interpersonal bundling, has been popularized on the Internet by companies such as Groupon. We explain why...

I find a positive relationship between broadband expansion and local economic growth. This relationship is stronger in industries that rely more on information technology and in areas with lower population densities. Instrumenting for broadband expansion with slope of terrain leans in the...

This paper focuses on the Internet, as a resource in the fulfillment of companies' needs to lease or buy office space in the U.S. A measure of this Internet use is introduced by two indexes considering the companies' preferences and the office stock in U.S. states and cities. The results...

By integrating a “big” dataset of Internet Speedtest® measurements from Ookla® with data on household incomes from the American Community Survey (ACS), we attempt to measure Internet speeds across income tiers. In the Ookla data, each measurement is technically rigorous but the sample...

About one-fifth of paid workdays will be supplied from home in the post-pandemic economy, and more than one-fourth on an earnings-weighted basis. In view of this projection, we consider some implications of home internet access quality, exploiting data from the new Survey of Working Arrangements...

Traffic on the Internet is growing so rapidly that many companies have troubles in maintaining pace with the demands of visitors of their Web site. One of the most important usage of the Internet is, of course, in electronic business. Internet is consisted of computer and communication...

A standard “solution” offered to the deleterious effects of all-out price competition is for firms to engage in differentiation strategies. This solution, however, depends critically on the inability of rivals to imitate a successful differentiation strategy. With imitation, we show how...