In this paper we investigate whether markets with heterogeneous network externalities can belocked-in by old technologies even if superior technologies are available. Heterogeneous networkexternalities are present when some consumers care more about the size of the market share of agood than...

We investigate empirically how sellers react to changes in the population of their consumers, identifying the effects of demand composition and demand size with limited information on costs. We show how pharmacists in Italy selectively increase the price of some products when they observe in...

How should firms optimally choose prices and promotional strategies and how should they position their products when consumers are "relative thinkers"? We provide answers in a model that extends the seminal contributions of Varian (1980) and Narasimhan (1988) and derive both managerial...

In many (online) markets, consumers can readily observe prices, but need to examine individual products at positive cost in order to assess how well they match their needs. We propose a tractable model of price-directed sequential search in a market where firms compete in prices. Each product...

This paper examines retail grocery price levels with a very large (unbalanced) panel of stores that operate in well-defined local markets. We explain price variation across grocery retailers by the concentration of wholesalers and retailers, and the market share of hypermarkets (and control for...

For many products, platforms enable sellers to transact with buyers. We show that the competitive conditions among sellers shape the market structure in platform industries. If product market competition is tough, sellers avoid competitors by joining different platforms. This allows platforms to...

This paper analyses a two-sided market in which two platforms compete against each other. One side, the advertisers, exerts a negative externality on the ther side, the users. It is shown that if platforms can charge advertisers only, a higher degree of competition for users can lead to higher...