How does the development of formal standards for information and communication technologies shape the behavior of firms that may need the technologies to develop new products and services? We argue that standardization lowers the search costs of identifying important intellectual property rights...

We investigate the impact of intergenerational services on the adoption of multi-generational platforms. We consider mobile Internet platform generations for which users download complementary services from third party providers. These services are often intergenerational: newer platforms are...

Understanding the process of software adoption is of paramount importance to software start-ups. We study a monopolistic seller's optimal consumer network structure formation (seeding, segmentation, sequencing, and pricing strategies) under network effects. We demonstrate the importance of...

The vast majority of US residential consumers face a monopoly or duopoly in broadband Internet access. Up to now, the Internet was characterizedby a regime of 'net neutrality' where there was no discrimination in theprice of a transmitted information packet based on the identities ofeither the...

This paper analyzes DRM-based technological tying, where the content and hardware form a system. A closed DRM system makes the legal content incompatible with a rival's hardware, whose users must then obtain illegal copies. The main finding is that the tying firm gains market power in a...

We study firms' choices of compatibility in a dynamic setting. Current compatibility choice shapes the distribution of consumers switching costs and thereby affects competition and compatibility choice in the future. Given today's market shares, the dynamics of compatibility is asymmetric in...

The increasing availability of individual-level data has raised the standards for measurability and accountability in digital advertising. Using a massive individual-level data set, our paper captures the effectiveness of display advertising across a wide range of consumer behaviors. Two unique...

Crowdfunding, a fundraising mechanism in which monetary contributions are raised from a large number of people, is booming and impacting government policy. We study two features of a well-known crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. First, we study the role of observable information in determining...

Alibaba’s Taobao is China’s dominant C2C e-commerce platform. Relying on novel transaction level data from its electronics category, this paper examines the roles of distance as well as seller and buyer experience in Chinese e-commerce. Our estimate of a gravity model shows that the distance...

We examine the dynamics of technology adoption and critical mass in network industries with an application to the U.S. electric vehicle (EVs) market. This market exhibits indirect network effects in that consumer EV adoption and investor deployment of public charging stations are interdependent....