This paper investigates the impact of unauthorized downloading of MP3 files on the recording industry. Although the no longer extant Napster was the most famous system used for such downloading, its progeny have continued to allow millions of music listeners to download music (and other) files...

Although it was once considered inevitable that unauthorized copying would harm copyright owners, it is now understood that this is not necessarily the case. The concept of indirect appropriability played an important role in shaping this newer understanding. In recent years, however, many...

We use a monthly dataset for the Colombian banking system from 2002 to 2010 to test the role of interest rate ceilings on competition in different segments of the credit market. We use maximum likelihood estimations of double hurdle probabilistic models to estimate the probability of tacit...

An expanding economics literature has examined the theoretical linkages between mandatory unbundling in the telecommunications sector and the incentives to invest in facilities by both incumbent local carriers and competitive carriers. Recent empirical evidence that substantiates the theory has...

We examine the impact of an incumbent carrier's participation in an auction set-aside for non-incumbents that was conducted simultaneously with an auction that was open to all carriers. We estimate the extent to which prices in the closed auction were inflated by the participation of incumbents....

The literature so far has analyzed the effects of Minimum Quality Standards in oligopoly, using models of pure vertical differentiation, with only two firms, and perfect information. We analyze products that are differentiated horizontally and vertically, with imperfect consumers information,...

Recently, empirical industrial organization economists have proposed estimators for dynamic games of incomplete information. In these models, agents choose from a finite number actions and maximize expected discounted utility in a Markov perfect equilibrium. Previous econometric methods estimate...

FCC spectrum auctions sell licenses to provide mobile phone service in designated geographic territories. We propose a method to structurally estimate the deterministic component of bidder valuations and apply it to the 1995-1996 C-block auction. We base our estimation of bidder values on a...

The LoopCo Plan, which uses market mechanisms to promote competition, is the best approach to restructuring the telecommunications market, say its proponents, who object to the requirements and to-date implementation of the Telecommunications Act of l996. The local-loop's spin-off 's consumer...

Open source software development has organizational characteristics that are out of the ordinary (e.g., flatter hierarchy, self-organization, self-regulation, and no ownership structure). The study suggests that this organization of work can be explained by combining the recently developed...