Taking the early U.S. automobile industry as an example, we evaluate four competing hypotheses on regional industry agglomeration: intra-industry local externalities, inter-industry local externalities, employee spinouts, and location fixed-effects. Our findings suggest that inter-industry...

I propose a novel explanation for new industry shakeouts: because of capacity sunk costs and the fear of backing the wrong technology, firms initially invest up to a small capacity, leading to a large number of initial entrants. As the dust settles and a dominant technology emerges, surviving...

Many new web-based services are introduced as free services. Depending on the seller’s business model, some remain free in the long run, while others switch to pay mode at some point in time. I characterize the relation between buyers and a new service seller when the former are uncertain...

We consider a partially integrated industry and examine the effects of contracts with a right of first refusal, whereby the vertically integrated firm has the option to match a quote from an independent supplier to supply an independent downstream firm.