This paper studies pricing strategies for a commercial software provider who faces competition from both a free-of-charge open-source software substitute and illegal copies of its own product. When network externalities are present, the commercial software provider may choose to set a price...

Mergers sometimes affect vertical relations between merging and non-merging firms. Vertically integrated non-merging firms may, for instance, lose its input sales to a downstream rival if the downstream rival merges with another vertically integrated firm. Thus, price responses from non-merging...

The open-source software operating system Linux is a free-of-charge substitute to proprietary systems like Microsoft Windows. By using a cross-country data set, this paper finds evidence that increased piracy of proprietary software has a negative impact on adoption of desktop versions of Linux....