This paper provides an economic analysis of recent vertical and horizontal mergers in the U.S. industry for audiovisual media content, including the AT&T-Time Warner and the Disney-Fox mergers. Using a theory-driven approach, we examine economic effects of these types of mergers on market...

We analyze how network regulation affects investment into network infrastructure and complementary services. While regulation negatively affcets investment incentives in the regulated network market, the effects of network regulation on investment in complementary services can be either negative...

This paper models competition between two firms, which provide broadband Internet 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...

We develop a model of international roaming in which mobile network operators (MNOs) compete both on the wholesale market to sell roaming services to foreign operators and on the retail market for subscribers. The operators own a network infrastructure only in their home country. To allow their...

This paper analyzes the incentives to invest in Next Generation Access Networks (NGA) in a framework with horizontal product differentiation with price competition between an investing and an access seeking firm. Given uncertainty about the success of the NGA, I compare regulatory regimes with...

This paper investigates how video game publishers’ choice of game release date is affected by the expected level of competition within the game’s product niche. We identify game niches by genre, age-appropriateness, a four week window cohort, publisher and console system. Our analysis is...

For quite a long time, network industries used to be regarded as (natural) monopolies. This was due to these industries having some special characteristics. Network externalities and economies of scale in particular justified the (natural) monopoly thesis. Recently, however, a trend towards...

We review the economics of superstars, originally developed for stars in traditional media, and discuss whether they are applicable for the (allegedly) novel phenomenon of stars in social media (influencer, micro-celebrities). Moreover, we analyse potentially new factors for creating social...

The unprecedented access of firms to consumer level data not only facilitates more precisely targeted individual pricing but also alters firms' strategic incentives. We show that exclusive access to a list of consumers can provide incentives for a firm to endogenously assume the price leader's...

The unprecedented access of firms to consumer level data facilitates more precisely targeted individual pricing. We study the incentives of a data broker to sell data about a segment of the market to three competing firms. The segment only includes a share of the consumers in the market around...