Our study aims at shedding light on the innovative business strategies in the software sector and particularly providing a better understanding of the economics underlying the supply of Open Source Software (OSS). We use survey data collected from 170 Finnish software companies to investigate...

This paper develops a simple model of piracy to analyze its effects on prices and welfare and to study the optimal enforcement policy. A monopolist produces an information good (involving a 'large' development cost and a 'small' reproduction cost) that is sold to two groups of consumers...

We examine the pricing trends in the online toy markets based on a unique set of panel data collected across three years’ span. The analysis was made through panel data regression models with error components and serial correlation, allowing comparisons of prices and price dispersions between...

The paper focuses on the innovative French broadband Internet industry that is characterised by inertia phenomena in terms of technology choice. We argue that although inertia on the supply side helps to explain the faster diffusion of ADSL, a more complete picture can be obtained when we...

The existence of costs to consumers to switch between products is central to the process by which firms set prices. Their effect on the introduction and diffusion of innovative technologies is not by now well understood, however. This paper aims to study this effect based on evidence in the...

We present an information good pricing model with persistently heterogeneous consumers and a rising marginal propensity for them to pirate. Three offsetting pricing mechanisms occur: skimming, compressing price changes, and delaying product launch. We identify a novel trade off in piracy's...

Social network markets appear to be very interesting to the eyes of the business world. This is due to the fast growth of the number of users. The paper investigates this market and the competition among the main companies. It studies also the behavior of consumers, when using social network and...

This paper studies the impact of software piracy on prominent and non-prominent software developers in markets based on a two-sided platform business. Consumer behavior is imperfect and, when adopting a platform, consumers only take prominent software into account. We show that prominent...

This note summarizes and updates our previous survey of the economics of digital piracy (Belleflamme and Peitz, 2012).