Economy-wide increasing returns to scale embodied in a general purpose technology (GPT) and its applications are often a key source of long-run growth. Yet the successful exploitation of increasing returns calls for coordination on a particular technological direction, reducing flexibility and...

The distinction between membership demand and demand for usage in platform competition is often ignored. Estelle Cantillon ECARES, Universite Libré de Bruxelles & Pai-Ling Yin, Sloan School of Management at MIT

When platforms compete for consumers, two types of consumer heterogeneity will matter: consumers value the presence of other consumers on a platform differently, and consumers contribute to the value of the platform differently. The optimal discriminatory pricing policy for platforms will depend...

The mobile applications (apps) industry has exhibited rapid entry and growth in the midst of a recession. Using unique data from the iPhone application ecosystem, we examine how the development of "killer apps" (apps appearing in the top grossing rank) varies by market and app characteristics....

Economy-wide increasing returns to scale embodied in a general purpose technology (GPT) and its applications are often a key source of long-run growth. Yet the successful exploitation of increasing returns calls for coordination on a particular technological direction, reducing flexibility and...

This paper describes open research questions related to the competition and market structure of financial exchanges and argues that only a combination of industrial organization and finance can satisfactorily attack these questions. Two examples are discussed to illustrate how the combination of...