As networks improve and new services emerge, questions arise that affect service deployments and network choices. The Internet is arguably a successful example of a network shared by many services. However, combining heterogeneous services on the same network need not always be the right answer,...

As new network services emerge, questions about service deployment and network choices arise. Although shared networks, such as the Internet, offer many advantages, combining heterogeneous services on the same network need not be the right answer as it comes at the cost of increased complexity....

New network technologies constantly seek to displace incumbents. Their success depends on technological superiority, the size of the incumbent’s installed base, users’ adoption behaviors, and various other factors. The goal of this paper is to develop an understanding of competition between...

Understanding the relationship between technology and economics is fundamental to making judicious policy and design decisions. Many technologies that are successful in meeting their technical goals often fail to get adopted due to economic factors. This holds true even for networked systems,...

Recommender systems typically work over sparse matrices. Although most methods assume so, these matrices' entries are often not missing at random (NMAR). How problematic is this? We present a puzzle. Some methods explicitly account for NMAR processes. This has been shown to improve predictions....

New technologies such as product simulators and virtual reality now allow firms to provide realistic product usage experiences and reduce buyer uncertainty about product quality. We argue that today's firms should view product design and investments to reduce buyer uncertainty as an integrated...

In Peer-to-Peer (P2P) media distribution, users obtain content from other users who already have it. This form of decentralized product distribution demonstrates several unique features. Only a small fraction of users in the network are queried when a potential adopter seeks a file and many of...

The benefits consumers get from a mobile phone depend on the software apps available to use on that phone. These indirect network effects are especially important since apps are specific to a platform (e.g., iOS or Android) and are often not available on all platforms at once. We measure the...