The authors present a classroom experiment designed to illustrate key concepts of third-degree price discrimination. By participating as buyers and sellers, students actively learn (1) how group pricing differs from uniform pricing,(2) how resale between buyers limits a seller's ability to price...

Understanding the process of software adoption is of paramount importance to software start-ups. We study a monopolistic seller’s optimal consumer network structure formation (seeding, segmentation, sequencing, and pricing strategies) under network effects. We demonstrate the importance of...

We consider a heretofore unexplored explanation for why platforms, such as Internet service providers, might impose download limits on content consumers: doing so increases the degree to which those consumers view content providers’ products as substitutes. This, in turn, intensifies the...

In this paper we investigate optimal pricing strategies for an online grocery retailer who derives its profits from delivery fees and grocery sales. We base our theoretical framework upon the well-established work of Schmalensee (1981) in two-part pricing, while allowing for repeat purchase...

We develop and analyze a model of pricing for digital products with discontinuous supply functions. This characterizes a number of information technology-based products and services for which variable increases in demand are fulfilled by the addition of "blocks" of computing or network...

We test the effect of entry on the tariff choices of incumbent cellular firms. We relate the change in the breadth of calling plans between 1996, when incumbents enjoyed a duopoly market, and 1998, when incumbents faced increased competition from personal communications services (PCS) firms....

We discuss salient economic aspects of the Internet, including the possible abolition of net neutrality by local broadband access networks as well as potential incompatibilities and degradation of connectivity in the Internet backbone.

Pricing of Internet access has been characterized by two properties. Parties are directly billed only by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) through which they connect to the Internet and the ISP charges them on the basis of the amount of information transmitted rather than its content. These...

When firms can identify their past customers, they may use information about purchase histories in order to price discriminate. We present a model with a monopolist and a continuum of heterogeneous consumers, where consumers can opt out from being identified, possibly at a cost. We find that...

The vast majority of US residential consumers face a monopoly or duopoly in broadband Internet access. Up to now, the Internet was characterized by a regime of “net neutrality” where there was no discrimination in the price of a transmitted information packet based on the identities of...