We develop a model of strategic geoblocking, where two competing multi-channel retailers, located in different countries, can decide to block access to their online store from foreign consumers. We characterize the equilibrium when firms decide unilaterally whether to introduce geoblocking...

Governments’ interest in Free/Open Source (F/OS) software is steadily increasing. Several policies aimed at supporting Free/Open Source (F/OS) software have been taken or are currently under discussion all around the world. In this paper, we review the basic (economic) rationales for such...

software involved. We provide empirical evidence that F/OSS support is stronger in countries i) where e-government services are more largely available, and ii) where the domestic software industry is lagging behind. This evidence supports common views among F/OSS advocates.

We study the strategic choice of compatibility between two initially incompatible software packages in a two-stage game by an incumbent and an entrant firm. Consumers enjoy network externality in consumption and maximise expected surplus over the two periods. Compatibility may be achieved by...

This paper offers a methodology to assess the internal productive efficiency of National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) based on the performances of regulated markets, measured in terms of the degree of market efficiency (either static or dynamic). The estimation procedure is based on a Data...

This paper studies the endogenous determination of the nature of telephone calls, namely whether they are local or long distance. Calls between users in the same local calling area are local, and we allow the extension of this area to be treated as a strategic variable. We show that the...

In this paper we build a simple three-country model to evaluate the impact of "call-back" on international telephony. The effects on both accounting rates and collection prices are studied. Call-back firms exploit arbitrage opportunities in collection prices among countries, rerouteing calls...

Thanks to a recent and vast empirical literature, we know in details how the most popular open source projects are organized and why they succeed. However, open source is not only Linux: in this paper we use a large data-set obtained from SourceForge.net to estimate the main determinants of the...

Dual licensing has proved to be a sustainable business model for various commercial software vendors employing open source strategies. In this paper we study the main characteristics of dual licensing and under which conditions it represents a profitable commercial strategy. We show that dual...

During the last few decades, the number of patents in information and communication technologies has increased considerably. An increasing number of patents and the associated fragmentation of IP rights have generated a series of potentially problematic consequences. Patent thickets, royalty...