Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in efficiency, and gives vendors lucrative ex...

We consider internet service providers' incentives to zero-rate, i.e. do not count towards data allowances, the consumption of certain services, in the absence of payments from content providers. In a general model with various types of network effects, service substitutes or complements,...

We investigate the welfare effects of third-degree price discrimination by a two-sided platform that enables interaction between buyers and sellers. Sellers are heterogenous with respect to their per-interaction benefit, and, under price discrimination, the platform can condition its fee on...

The static model of two sided markets proposed by Rochet and Tirole analyses optimal pricing of a monopolistic platform at the equilibrium point. Their framework implicitly assumes that for each prices set by the platform, the equilibrium number of users on each side will be unique. However,...

The paper provides an analysis of the second-degree price discrimination problem on a monopolistic two-sided market. In a simple framework with two distinct types of agents on market side 1, we show that under incomplete information the extent of platform access for high-demand agents is...

Firms strategically investing in creating (or strengthening) network effects, are engaged in actively shifting market structure. From situations where standard competition may be possible, they shift the market towards monopoly, betting on their ability to win the 'competition for the market'....

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004: We develop a general theoretical framework of trade on a platform on which buyers and sellers interact. The platform may be owned by a single large, or many small independent or vertically integrated intermediaries. We...

The new economics of multi-sided platforms involves a number of concepts that are familiar to economists as well as some new ones. This glossary, which is drawn from our book Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multi-sided Platforms, is an attempt to put together the main concepts and to provide...