Technology platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, are the hubs of technology industries. The strategic behavior of a firm controlling a platform affects crucially industry evolution. We develop a framework to characterize the optimal two-sided pricing strategy of a platform firm, that is, the...

Digital products such as movies, music and computer software are protected both by self-help measures such as encryption and copy controls, and by the legal right to prevent copying. We explore how digital rights management and other technical protections a®ect the pricing of content, and...

This paper studies whether competition may induce firms abandoning deceptive pricing strategies aimed to profit from mistaken choices of consumers. The empirical analysis focuses on the pricing practices of early U.S. cellular firms, both under monopoly and duopoly. Foggy tariff options are...

Performing a search on the World Wide Web (WWW) and traversing the resulting links is an adventure in which one encounters both credible and incredible web pages. Search engines, such as Google, rely on macroscopic Web topology patterns and even highly ranked ‘authoritative’ web sites may be...

This paper examines the preferences of a foreign firm and a welfare-maximizing host country government over two modes of foreign direct investment (FDI): de novo entry by the foreign firm and acquisition of the domestic incumbent. Two crucial features of the model are the presence of network...

Improving the information retrieval (IR) performance of peer-to-peer networks is an important and challenging problem. Recently, the computer science literature has attempted to address this problem by improving IR search algorithms. However, in peer-to-peer networks, IR performance is...

The success of the CD has (partly) been attributed to the ability of Sony, Philips and Matsushita to cooperate in the run-up to the DAD conference in 1981, where the technological standard was set. We model the situation leading up to the conference in a simple game with technological progress...

This paper examines how incumbents respond to the threat of entry of competitors, as distinguished from their response to competitors’ actual entry. It uses a case study from the passenger airline industry—specifically, the evolution of Southwest Airlines’ route network—to identify...

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will transform many aspects of traditional telephony service including technology, the business models and the regulatory constructs that govern such service. This transformation is generating a host of technical, business, social and policy problems. The...

Cellular telephony and associated data services has been a major social phenomena for well over a decade now. It has changed the way – in some countries more than others – in which people communicate. In many countries in Northern Europe and Asia, its penetration rates are very high and in...