We study competitive interaction between profit-maximizing firms that sell software and complementary goods or services. In addition to tactical price competition, we allow firms to compete through business model reconfigurations. We consider three business models: the proprietary model (where...

Perhaps the most striking feature of "crowdfunding'' is the broad geographic dispersion of investors. This contrasts with existing theories that predict entrepreneurs and investors will be co-located due to distance-sensitive costs. We examine a crowdfunding setting that connects...

The open source model is a form of software development with source code that is typically made available to all interested parties. At the core of this process is a decentralized production process: open source software development is done by a network of unpaid software developers. Using data...

The digitization of content has led to the emergence of platforms that draw information from multiple sources. Policymakers are concerned that these new platforms threaten incentives for the production of original content. As a result, policymakers are contemplating regulations that would force...

Proper configuration of security technologies is critical to balance the access and protection requirements of information. The common practice of using a layered security architecture that has multiple technologies amplifies the need for proper configuration because the configuration decision...

Liberalization of the European automobile distribution system in 2002 limits the ability of manufacturers to impose vertical restraints, leading to a substantial restructuring of the industry and increasing the competitive pressure among dealers. We estimate an equilibrium model of profit...

This paper studies the role of firm heterogeneity and information spillovers in the sourcing decision to provide web services. To this end, we develop a theoretical model that relates these factors to firms' decisions to outsource or use in-house resources (insource). Based on this theoretical...

This paper investigates how the destabilizing of a social network may increase the scope of network externalities, using data on sales of a video-calling system made by a business-to- usiness manufacturer to banking employees and subsequent usage by these customers. The terrorist attacks of 2001...

We consider software developers who can either work on an open source project or on a closed source project. The former provides a publicly available signal about their talent, whereas the latter provides a signal only observed by their employer. We show that a talented employee may initially...

We analyze the linking and versioning strategies of a media firm when facing competition from blogs, search engines and news aggregators. First, we show that when the publisher competes against a blog it is less likely to release a fighting version if this generates signi ficant spillovers for...