This paper examines four alternative product strategies available to an innovating firm in markets with network effects: single-product monopoly, technology licensing, product-line extension, and a combination of licensing and product-line extension. We address three questions. First, what...

We use basic probability theory and simple replicable electronic search experiments to evaluate some reported “myths” surrounding the origins and evolution of the QWERTY standard. The resulting evidence is strongly supportive of arguments put forward by Paul A. David (1985) and W. Brian...

This paper explores empirically the interplay between patent pooling and litigations using data on 1564 United States patents belonging to eight modern I.C.T. pools and to a control database with patents having the same characteristics. First, our analysis makes it possible to highlight that...

This paper looks at the emergence of what is described here as the QWERTY family of standards (QWERTY and its international adaptations QZERTY, AZERTY, and QWERTZ). QWERTY has been described as an inferior solution and an accident of history. However, the analysis here finds that each member of...

A network market is a market in which the benefit each consumer derives from a good is an increasing function of the number of consumers who own the same or similar goods. A major obstacle that plagues the introduction of a network good is the ability to reach critical mass, namely, the minimum...

In this paper the authors investigate whether and how, in a network industry, the intensity of network effects affect the total pollution under the presence of a union interested to "local" environmental damages (e.g. polluting production processes damaging workers' health and the local...

This paper presents a model of local network effects in which agents connected in a social network each value the adoption of a product by a heterogeneous subset of other agents in their neighborhood, and have incomplete information about the structure and strength of adoption complementarities...

In a network industry, this paper investigates the impact of network effects on total pollution under the presence of a union interested to "local" environmental damages (e.g., polluting production processes damaging workers' health and the local environment where workers live). Under monopoly,...

We consider duopolists innovating and producing a good subject to network externalities, so that the reservation price of a consumer increases with aggregate consumption. The post-innovation network consists of two compatible sub-networks, with increased network valuation of the new product....