With the rapid growth of the Internet, the ability of users to create and publish content has created active electronic communities that provide a wealth of product information. However, the high volume of reviews that are typically published for a single product makes harder for individuals as...

A model of a two-sided market with two horizontally differentiated platforms and multihoming on one side is developed. In contrast to recent contributions, it is shown that platforms do not necessarily generate all revenues on the multihoming side by charging a higher price. Also, whether...

This paper provides a thorough analysis of oligopolistic markets with positive demand-side network externalities and perfect compatibility. The minimal structure imposed on the model primitives is such that industry output increases in a firm's rivals' total output as well as in the expected...

Technology firms often decide between being open or closed to third party application development. Building on a two-sided market model with competing platforms, I show that firms might prefer to restrict third party application development despite the fact that allowing it is free and increases...

In Illinois Tool Works and Trident v. Independent Ink, the Supreme Court overturned its longstanding per se rule against tied sales by a firm with a patent. Henceforth, market power will have to be demonstrated, whether or not the firm has a patent. Upon such demonstration, a tied sales contract...

Online consumer reviews constitute an integral aspect of electronic transactions as they play a part in lowering customer uncertainty during purchase decision making. This paper studies the aspect of negativity exhibited on the justification of its valence by the review text (as a dependent...

We consider a two-tier industry with an upstream monopolist trading, via interim observable linear tariff contracts, with two differentiated goods downstream of Stackelberg competitors. The upstream monopolist owns a symmetric minority share on both downstream customers, i.e., there is passive...

This paper studies asymmetric platforms' incentives for enforcing exclusivity on multihoming sellers. We show that exclusivity benefits a platform only when its service is not very valuable to sellers, and hence can be initiated by a weak platform rather than the stronger one. It is possible for...

This article discusses the approaches of the European Union (EU) and of the United States (US) to the notions of agreement and concerted practice applied to horizontal collusive consequences of vertical restraints. I conclude that networks of vertical restraints blur the differences between...

This paper proposes a dynamic approach to modeling opportunism in bilateral vertical contracting between an upstream monopolist and competing downstream firms. Unlike previous literature on opportunism which has focused on games in which the upstream firm makes simultaneous secret offers to the...