Relying on transaction cost logic we consider the likelihood that contract duration and monitoring are jointly determined in 241 cable franchise renewal agreements. Results indicate that municipalities award longer contracts to larger cable companies with more asset specific investments, but...

We discuss the incentive of an exclusive holder of a technology to share it with competitors in a market with network externalities. We assume that high expected sales increase the willingness to pay for the good. This is named the "network effect". At a stable fulfilled expectations...

At Thanksgiving 2018, while visiting his video-artist daughter, the author of this paper re-read Atlas Shrugged for the second time, 44 years after first reading, as described in a paper promulgated on SSRN in late January, 2019. Then a few weeks later, at Christmas 2018, while visiting his...

In some industries, monopoly is natural. One provider can serve the relevant demand cheaper than two or more firms. If the monopoly is not contestable, i.e. not controlled by a credible threat of entry, regulation is necessary. The essential facilities doctrine is one such regulatory tool. It...

Conventional wisdom presumes that a supplier in a monopolistic market, or in an oligopolistic market that is not perfectly competitive, has the power to charge a supra-competitive wholesale price. In contrast, elaborating on recent economics studies, this Article shows that the supplier of an...

This study examines the 'logic' or underlying causality of supply relationships. It develops and tests hypotheses, in a LISREL model, on detailed data for 553, 450 and 226 supply relationships in the US, Japanese and European automobile industries. The differences found between the three regions...

The importance of digital platforms and related data-driven business models is ever in-creasing and poses challenges for the workability of competition in the respective markets (tendencies towards dominant platforms, paying-with-data instead of traditional money, privacy concerns, etc.). Due to...

Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in efficiency, and gives vendors lucrative ex...

Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in efficiency, and gives vendors lucrative ex...