Strategic patenting is widely believed to raise the costs of innovating, especially in industries characterised by cumulative innovation. This paper studies the effects of strategic patenting on R&D, patenting and market value in the computer software industry. We focus on two key aspects: patent portfolio size which affects bargaining power in patent disputes, and the fragmentation of patent r...

Revolutionary Effects of New Information Technologies In markets with imperfect information and heterogeneity, the information technology affects the rate at which agents meet, which in turn affects the distribution of production technologies across firms. We show that in models for such markets there are typically multiple equilibria because reservation utility levels and the lowest production...

In this paper we develop a model with (1) differentiated consumers, (2) endogenous adoption times, (3) technical uncertainty, and (4) alternative technologies sponsored by competing vendors. We identify conditions under which orphaning arises endogenously in a framework of dynamic competition. We then use the model to examine the development of the microcomputer market in the early 1980s, when ...

This study explores the importance of cross-border social networks for entrepreneurship in developing countries by examining ties between the Indian expatriate community and local entrepreneurs in India’s software industry. We find that local entrepreneurs who are based in cities with weaker formal institutions rely significantly more on diaspora networks for business leads and financing. Relyi...

With the recent diffusion of broadband services, IP telephony is expected to spread significantly in Japan. This paper investigates the demand for IP telephony by using conjoint analysis. Projecting IP telephony demand also contributes to Japanese info-communication policy discussions. Two points are made. First, IP telephony is still currently considered an optional supplement or an add-on ser...

Article history: Received 1 October 2013 Received in revised form 1 October 2014 Accepted 5 November 2014 Available online 4 February 2015 This paper investigates the effects of software intellectual property rights (IPRs) on the performance of software firms. For this, technical efficiency scores for Korean software firms are examined, and for an empirical analysis, data envelopment analysis (...

In the EU, most large firms use e-business applications, such as enterprise resource planning and online procurement. Based on e-business watch data for EU-4 (Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom) we find that the actual use of enterprise resource planning and online procurement is positively correlated with labour productivity growth. Furthermore, we find that certain e-business appli...

Since 1998 a lots of European Internet Service Providers (ISP) started to provide internet access freely. Why does a profit maximizing operator adopts this pricing policy? A consumer who wants to surf on the net needs to buy two services: the access from the ISP and the connection from the Telephone Operator. Since the two services are complements, the price of one service creates a negative ex...

This paper analyses the growth trends in the Indian Computer Industry for the period 1991-2002. We focus on the significance of size and age on growth of firms and whether or not the law of diminishing returns to learning holds for a high tech industry like computers. An important difference between the computer software and hardware industry is also taken into account: The software industry is...

In this paper we present a theoretical model to study the characteristics and the commercial sustainability of dual licensing, an open source (OS) business strategy that has gained popularity among software vendors. With dual licensing, a firm releases the same software product under both a traditional proprietary license and an open source one. We show that the decision to employ a dual licens...