A monopolist offers a product to a market of consumers with heterogeneous quality preferences. Although initially uninformed about the product quality, they learn by observing past purchase decisions and reviews of other consumers. Our goal is to analyze the social learning mechanism and its...

In this paper we study the implications of service level guarantees (SLGs) in a model of oligopoly competition where providers compete to deliver a service to congestion-sensitive consumers. The SLG is a contractual obligation on the part of the service provider: regardless of how many customers...

We analyze the behavior of start-ups in e-commerce, namely on Austria's leading price-comparison-site, a multi-product environment with almost complete information. We use weekly panel data on price-quotes of digicams, Audio/HiFi-equipment and hardware. We furthermore use advanced estimation...

A monopolist offers a product to a market of consumers with heterogeneous quality preferences. Although initially uninformed about the product quality, they learn by observing past purchase decisions and reviews of other consumers. Our goal is to analyze the social learning mechanism and its...

In Cournot's model of complements, the producers of A and B are both monopolists. This paper extends Cournot's model to allow for competition between complements on one side of the market. Consider two complements, A and B, where the A+B bundle is valuable only when purchased together. Good A is...

Public “Beta” launches have become a preferred route of entry into the markets for new software products and web site based services. While beta testing of novel products is nothing new, typically such tests were done by experts within firm boundaries. What makes public beta testing so...