Customer switching costs can limit the opportunities for new entry in some markets. Incumbent firms may be able to reduce these switching costs, but have no incentive to do so without regulatory intervention. For example, in telecommunications, incumbent firms can provide customers with number...

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...

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 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...

We analyze how different degrees of privacy protection affect industry profits, consumer welfare, and total welfare in a model with switching costs. Firms earn higher profits under weak privacy protection compared with strong or no privacy protection. The relationship between the degree of...

Chapter 1 studies how consumers’ switching costs affect the pricing and profits of firms competing in two-sided markets such as Apple and Google in the smartphone market. When two-sided markets are dynamic – rather than merely static – I show that switching costs lower the first-period...

This paper models competition between two firms, which provide broadband In-ternet 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...