Piracy has been a major problem for perpetually licensed software. Usage-based licensing architecture such as pay-per-use or software-as-a-service can offer technology-based protection against piracy. We provide an analytical framework to examine the economic implications of pay-per-use versus...

Advances in information technology increasingly allow firms to identify expensive, high-cost customers, who are not only individually less profitable for firms but also raise the average marginal cost incurred by firms and thus impose a negative externality on inexpensive customers. Should...

In the macroeconomic literature, the implications of a context with household heterogeneity and incomplete financial markets have been mostly studied under the assumption that households own the physical capital and undertake the intertemporal investment decision. Further, firms rent capital and...

We study the quantitative properties of constrained efficient allocations in an environment where risk sharing is limited by the presence of private information. We consider a life cycle version of a standard Mirrlees economy where shocks to labor productivity have a component that is public...

Several factors suggest that meaningful network neutrality rules will not be enshrined in near-term U.S. telecommunications policy. These include disagreements over the need for such rules as well as their definition, efficacy and enforceability. However, as van Schewick (2005)1 has demonstrated...

This paper provides a framework for understanding competition and industry structure in the context of Fiber to the Home (FTTH). We present engineering cost models, which indicate that FTTH is a decreasing cost industry, thereby making facilities based competition an unlikely outcome....

A global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market is quickly emerging, with several significant development projects very recently completed or underway; these projects consist of extraction, liquefaction, shipping, regasification, and storage facilities. Exact valuation of the real option to store...

We consider the problem of randomly assigning n indivisible objects to n agents. Recent research introduced a promising mechanism, the probabilistic serial that has superior efficiency properties than the most common real-life mechanism random priority. On the other hand, mechanisms based on...

This paper studies the Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) adverse selection environment, relaxing the assumption of exclusivity of insurance contracts. Agents can engage in multiple insurance contracts simultaneously, and the terms of these contracts are not observed by other firms. Insurance...

We study the role of mortgage brokers in the subprime crisis using a detailed sample of loans originated by, formerly, one of the largest subprime loan originators, New Century Financial Corporation. Prior to the subprime crisis, mortgage brokerage firms originated about 65% of all subprime...