We study duopoly pricing in the market for mobile phone service, which features network externalities, switching costs, and consumer heterogeneity. We introduce a steady state approach that enables a tractable analysis without endgame effects. The model can generate a variety of testable...

We model a two-sided market with heterogeneous customers and two heterogeneous network effects. In our model, customers on each market side care differently about both the number and the type of customers on the other side. Examples of two-sided markets are online platforms or daily newspapers....

Hotelling’s famous ‘Principle of Minimum Differentiation’ asserts that two firms engaging in spatial competition with fixed prices will decide to locate at the same place. Interpreting spatial competition as modeling product differentiation, firms will thus offer products that are not...

We develop a structural econometric framework that allows us to simulate the effects of mergers among two-sided platforms selling differentiated products. We apply the proposed methodology to the Dutch newspaper industry. Our structural model encompasses demands for differentiated products on...

The literature on information aggregation predicts that market growth unambiguously reduces uncertainty about the value of traded goods. The results were developed within the classical model, which assumes that traders’ values for the exchanged good are determined by fundamental (common)...

In this article I analyze the effects of a recent reform intended to decrease switching costs in the cellular industry. The reform, implemented in Chile in 2012, allowed cell phone users to switch operators without any contract restriction while keeping their wireless number. Its aim was the...

This paper investigates how switching costs affect product compatibility and market dynamics in network industries. A reduction in the switching cost makes the firms' products more attractive relative to the outside good, which diminishes the market expansion benefit of making products...

Online platforms, such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon, are constantly expanding their activities, while increasing the overlap in their service offering. In this paper, we study the scope and overlap of online platforms' activities, when they are endogenously determined. We model an expansion...

We consider a structural model of demand and supply where firms endogenously offer vertically differentiated products and exercise second-degree price discrimination. We apply this model to the smartphone industry and quantify the welfare effects of price discrimination and competition. We use...

This paper investigates the patent licensing networks formed by competing firms. Assuming that licensing agreements can involve the payment of fixed fees only and that firms compete à la Cournot, we show that the complete network is always bilaterally efficient and that the monopoly network is...