In many telecommunications markets incumbent providers enjoy a demand-side advantage over any entrant. However, market entrants may enjoy a supply-side advantage over the incumbent, since they are more efficient or operate on innovative technologies. Considering both a supply-side and a...

We focus on four important features of mobile targeting. First, consumers' real-time locations are known to sellers. Second, location is not the only factor determining how responsive consumers are to discounts. Other factors such as age, income and occupation play a role, which are imperfectly...

We analyze firms' ability to sustain collusion in a setting in which horizontally differentiated firms can price-discriminate based on private information regarding consumers' preferences. In particular, firms receive private signals which can be noisy (e.g., big data predictions). We find that...

We analyze firms' location choices in a Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity, along addresses and transport cost parameters (flexibility). Firms can price discriminate based on perfect data on consumer addresses and (possibly) imperfect data on consumer flexibility. We...

It is increasingly observable that competitors in different industries share customer data, which can be used for targeted pricing. We propose a modified Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity to analyze the incentives for such sharing and its ensuing welfare effects. We...

We investigate how firms' incentives to acquire customer data for targeted offers depend on its quality. A two-dimensional Hotelling model is proposed where consumers are heterogeneous both with respect to their locations and transportation cost parameters (flexibility). Firms have perfect data...

Katz (1987), DeGraba (1990), and Yoshida (2000) have formulated theories that price discrimination bans in intermediary goods markets tend to have positive effects on allocative, dynamic and productive efficiency, respectively. We show that none of these results is robust vis-à-vis endogenous...

In this note we analyze the sustainability of collusion in a game of repeated interaction where firms can price discriminate among consumers based on two types of customer data. This work is related to Liu and Serfes (2007) and Sapi and Suleymanova (2013). Following Sapi and Suleymanova we...

This paper demonstrates that the standard conclusions regarding the comparison of Cournot and Bertrand competition are reversed in a vertically related market with upstream monopoly and trading via two-part tariffs. In such a market, downstream Cournot competition yields higher output, lower...

We analyze how consumer myopia influences investment incentives into a technology that enables firms to track consumers' purchases and make targeted offers based on their preferences. In a two-period Hotelling setup firms may invest in customer-tracking technology. If a firm acquires the...