The large and growing industry of price comparison websites (PCWs) or ‘web aggregators’ is poised to benefit consumers by increasing competitive pricing pressure on firms acquainting shoppers with more prices. However, these sites also charge for sales, which feeds back raise I investigate the impact introducing PCWs a market homogeneous good. find that single PCW increases prices all consumers...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we test Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of deviations in capacity utilization rates from a pre-determined target level. We discuss implications for the use of demand-side incentives to deal with c...

We discuss economic rationales behind peering decisions in the Internet. In the first part of the paper we analyze the decision about a bilateral peering agreement between two commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) who are in Cournot competition. In the second part we discuss multilateral peering between commercial ISPs and an academic research network (ARN). The latter is organized as cl...

Does the Internet provide a failsafe against media consolidation in the wake of an easing of media ownership rules? This paper posits a model of news outlet selection on the Internet in which consumers experience cognitive costs that increase with the number of options faced. Consistent with psychological evidence, these costs may be reduced by constraining one’s choice set to “safe bets” famil...

This paper offers an analysis of the evolution of e-commerce markets. We develop a model in which an initial group of small, no-name “click” firms create such markets by offering horizontally differentiated customized or “versioned” products and competing in prices. Subsequently, a traditional “brick” firm enters by stretching its brand name into the digital marketplace. Such entry causes many ...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we investigate Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth both predictable and unpredictable demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of deviations in capacity utilization rates from a pre-determined target level. A 10 percent increase in price var...

We examine the pricing trends in the online toy markets by using panel data regression models with error components and serial correlation. Our results indicate that both online branch of multi-channel retailers (OBMCRS) and dotcoms charge similar prices on average, and that over time their prices move in tandem. Although the OBMCR retailers charge significantly different prices, the dotcoms do...

In this paper, I explore the circumstances under which innovation processes without secrecy or intellectual property protection are viable, and where free revealing of innovations is a profit-maximizing strategy. Motivated by an empirical study of embedded Linux, I develop a duopoly model of quality competition. Firms require two complementary technologies as inputs, but differ with respect to ...