With the proliferation of new innovative technologies, electronic gadgets like smartphones loaded with sophisticated user friendly apps are getting popularity among large proportion of phone users. As a result, advertisers are using apps as a medium of communication to showcase their products...

Open Innovation and Services Science are two distinct paradigms that share some principles 0. While some attempts to investigate open innovation according to a service science perspective exist, there is currently a gap with regards to the analysis of intermediaries of open innovation according...

The release of a new platform version is often preceded by prelaunch activities including a preannouncement of new features, improvements, and other innovations. The information contained within these preannouncements not only shape expectations of distinct but connected sides, e.g., users and...

A common concern in institutions of higher education is to keep its former students involved with academic activities. It is a consensus that one of the most valuable assets of universities is their alumni, given that their accomplishments ensures more visibility to the university. In recent...

We study price discrimination by a monopoly two-sided platform who mediates interactions between two different groups of agents. We adapt a canonical model of second degree price discrimination a la Mussa and Rosen (1978) to a two-sided platform by focusing on non-responsiveness, a clash between...

Filing of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to the Federal Trade Commission for the FTC's June 9, 2015 workshop on "The “Sharing” Economy: Issues Facing Platforms, Participants, and Regulators." The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is dedicated to advancing knowledge...

While prior research has studied the motivations of individuals to consume content on social media platforms, limited work exists on how contributors are motivated to create content. We examine the role of peer influence in content production on YouTube, where content creators are competing for...

This publication is the second annual report of the Internet Monitor project at the Berkman Centerfor Internet & Society at Harvard University. As with the inaugural report, this year’s edition is a collaborative effort of the extended Berkman community. Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on...

A crucial aspect to the functioning of the collaborative economy is the incentive structure that encourages participation. The objective of our research is to understand the impact of project reward structure (PRS), one form of incentives, on backers’ pledging decisions during projects’...

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) platforms have become a major engine of growth in Internet commerce. This is especially true in countries such as China, which are experiencing a big rush towards electronic commerce. The emergence of such platforms gives researchers the unique opportunity to...