Open payment card networks typically coordinate the activities of thousands of financial institutions that issue cards, millions of retail locations that accept them, and several hundred million consumers that use them. This coordination can include the collective setting of certain prices and...

The popular press often extolls packet networks as much more efficient than switched voice networks in utilizing transmission lines. This impression is reinforced by the delays experienced on the Internet and the famous graphs for traffic patterns through the major exchange points on the...

I empirically examine the impact of the liberalization and regulatory process on the Latin American telecommunications sector during the period 1990-1998. I find that privatisation and the existence of an independent regulator are positively associated with teledensity and operating efficiency...

Credit cards provide benefits to consumers and merchants not provided by other payment instruments as evidenced by their explosive growth in the number and value of transactions over the last 20 years. Recently, credit card networks have come under scrutiny from regulators and antitrust...

This article reviews a recent paper by Brock (2000) analyzing developments in the airline industry. Using Department of Transportation data, we attempt to verify a number of assertions made by Brock regarding changes in industry concentration and prices throughout the 1990s. We also compare a...

The American copyright system separately protects the sounds in music recordings and the words and music of the underlying musical composition upon which they are based; separate rights are further defined for the reproduction and public performance of both the recording and the composition. The...

This paper reviews Garcia Mariñoso's 2001 Journal of Industrial Economics article on endogenous switching costs and product compatibility. In that paper, Garcia Mariñoso concludes that producers of so-called product systems (which consist of hardware or platforms plus applications) can have...

In a critique of my paper "Technological Incompatibility, Endogenous Switching Costs and Lockin", Haucap (2003) argues that its applicability for policy purposes is limited by its reliance on the assumptions of no market growth and of the firms' ability to commit to technological compatibility....