This chapter develops a transaction cost theoretic model of network effects and applies it to assessing the chances of users to influence, through collective action, the range of technological choices available to them on IT markets. The theoretical basis of the model is formulated through a...

Many online businesses, including most of the largest platforms, seek and provide attention. These online attention rivals provide products and features to obtain the attention of consumers and sell some of that attention, through other products and services, to merchants, developers and others...

Revisions incorporated into the Horizontal Merger Guidelines in 2010 claim that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission consider anticompetitive effects to product “variety” when evaluating mergers. The Guidelines do not, however, explain the methodology or tools that can...

This paper studies monopolistic third-degree price discrimination incorporating consumers' fairness concerns: Discriminatory pricing antagonizes consumers and may reduce their demand. In contrast to previous studies, we show that consumers' concerns about price inequity may deter discriminatory...

Credence goods markets, such as those for car repairs and medical treatments, are generally characterized by an ex-ante and ex-post information asymmetry between the uninformed buyer and the informed seller. Previous literature demonstrates that efficiency and fraud in a monopolist credence...

The Internet allows sellers to track “window shoppers,” consumers who look but do not buy, and to lure them back later by targeting them with an advertised sale. This new technology thus facilitates intertemporal price discrimination, but simultaneously makes it too easy for a seller to...

A monopolist uses prices as an instrument to influence consumers' belief about the unknown quality of its product. Consumers observe prices and sales in earlier periods to learn about the product. Every period they decide whether to consume the product or to wait for a lower price in future. We...

Sellers are increasingly utilizing big data and sophisticated algorithms to price discriminate among customers. Indeed, we are approaching a world, where each consumer will be charged a personalized price for a personalized product or service. Is this type of price discrimination good or bad?...

This survey aims to provide an overview of recent developments in the industrial organization literature that explores the behavior of profit-maximizing firms facing consumers with reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion. We discuss the implications of loss aversion on the practice of...