It has been argued that cognitively constrained consumers respond sub-optimally to complex decision problems, and that firms can exploit these limitations by introducing spurious complexity into tariff structures, weakening price competition. We model a countervailing force. Restricting one's...

Bloggers devote significant time not only producing content for others to read, watch or listen to, but also paying attention to and engaging in interactions with other bloggers. We hope to throw light not only on the factors that gain bloggers significant readership and lively interactions with...

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free...

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the...

I consider a Vickrey-Salop model of spatial product differentiation with quasi-linear utility functions and contrast two modes of production, the proprietary model where entrepreneurs sell software to the users, and the open source model where users participate in software development. I show...

We study theoretically and experimentally a two-person partnership game whereby agents only see the uncertain outcome of their joint effort but not how much the other agent contributed to it. The model combines problems of free-riding present in public good production and in teams with imperfect...

This paper deals with the role of reciprocation in the formation of individuals' social networks, that is to what extent initiating a relation brings about its reciprocation. Following the activity of a panel of bloggers over more than a year, we seek to establish whether bloggers are mainly...

Should people be allowed to leave joint projects freely or should they be deterred from breaking off? This depends on why people stop collaborating and whether they have good reasons to do so. We explore the factors that lead to the breakdown of partnerships by studying a public good game with...

Bloggers devote significant time not only producing content for others to read, watch or listen to, but also paying attention to and engaging in interactions with other bloggers. We hope to throw light not only on the factors that gain bloggers significant readership and lively interactions with...

Consumers make mistakes when facing complex purchasing decision problems but if at least some consumers choose only among offers that are easy to compare with others then firms will adopt common ways to present their offers and thus make choice easier (Gaudeul and Sugden, 2011). We design an...