The deployment of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) is attractive from both technical and social perspectives, but market forces may not suffice to trigger the desired levels of investment. Cave (2004) and the European Commission (2010) describe how National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) have...

Questions about the efficacy of cost-based prices, as a basis for pricing capacity access in telecommunication networks, continue to dominate the debate in both theory and practice. The literature questions the versatility of cost-based access from the standpoint of option pricing theory. The...

The introduction of broadband in schools provides a new resource for learning but also an opportunity for distraction. Consequently, broadband use in schools can either increase or reduce students' performance. This paper provides a model that shows how these two effects trade off. We use a rich...

Growing interest in inequality has generated an outpouring of scholarly research and has brought many discussions on the subject into the public realm. Surprisingly, most of these studies and discussions rely on a narrow set of indicators to measure inequality. Most of the time a single summary...

In this paper we show that inequality and unemployment are related positively across the European continent, within countries, between countries and through time. This contradicts the often-repeated view that unemployment in Europe is attributable to rigid wage structures, high minimum wages and...

Temporary workers already represent a relevant percentage of the total workforce in several European countries. This type of employment is usually associated with more precarious contractual and working conditions. This situation can lead to several negative outcomes in terms of workers'...

There is, nowadays, no satisfactory answer to the question which titles this paper. It is, however, possible to explain why that is the case, and provide some clues for further elaboration and thought.Section 2 details the theory of “homo oeconomicus”, which experts on economics claim to...

We look at the interplay between price promotions and peer influence in the case of movies in Video-on-Demand (VoD), which are non-storable information goods. We analyze the outcomes from a randomized experiment run for 3 consecutive months using the VoD system of a large telecommunications...

Recommender systems assign products to slots in ways that improve consumers' experience when choosing what to buy. They usually lead to more sales, which increases both consumer surplus and profit. However, firms may also choose which recommender system to use to maximize profit. Furthermore,...

Physical retailers are increasingly trying to understand in-store shopping behavior in order to increase sales. However, measuring and analyzing shopper behavior at the point of purchase in physical retailing remains challenging. In this paper, we implement an in-vivo randomized field experiment...