Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe analyze the competitive effects of bilateral cross‐licensing agreements in a setting with many competing firms. We show that firms can sustain the monopoly outcome if they can sign unconstrained bilateral cross‐licensing contracts. This result is robust to increasing the number of firms who can enter into a cross‐licensing agreement. We also investigate the scenario in which a cross‐licensing contract cannot involve the payment of a royalty by a licensee who decides ex post not to use the licensed technology. Finally, policy implications regarding the antitrust treatment of cross‐licensing agreements are derived.

We consider competition between sellers selling multiple distinct products to a buyer having k slots. Under independent pricing, a pure strategy equilibrium often does not exist, and equilibrium in mixed strategy is never efficient. When bundling is allowed, each seller has an incentive to bundle his products, and an efficient "technology-renting" equilibrium always exists. Furthermore, in the case of digital goods or when sales below marginal cost are banned, all equilibria are efficient. Comparing the mixed-strategy equilibrium with the technology-renting equilibrium reveals that bundling often increases the buyer's surplus. Finally, we derive clear-cut policy implications.(JEL D43, D86, K21, L13, L14, L41, L82)

Electronic academic journal websites provide text and data mining (and linking) services. Fully realizing the benefit of these services requires interconnection among websites. We perform a comparison between multilateral interconnection through an open platform and bilateral interconnection, and find that publishers are fully interconnected in the former regime whereas they are often partially interconnected in the latter regime for exclusion or differentiation motives. If partial interconnection arises for differentiation motives, exclusion of a small publisher(s) occurs more often in the former than in the latter. In the case of multilateral interconnection, an open platform generates lower welfare than a for‐profit platform.

37 pages, 3 figures.-- JEL Classification Codes: D4, K23, L51, L96. -- The paper was previously circulated under the title "A Retail Benchmarking Approach to Efficient Two-Way Access Pricing: Termination-Based Price Discrimination with Elastic Subscription Demand". ; In this paper, we study how access pricing affects network competition when subscription demand is elastic and each network uses non-linear prices and can apply termination-based price discrimination. In the case of a fixed per minute termination charge, we find that a reduction of the termination charge below cost has two opposing effects: it softens competition but helps to internalize network externalities. The former reduces mobile penetration while the latter boosts it. We find that firms always prefer termination charge below cost for either motive while the regulator prefers termination below cost only when this boosts penetration. Next, we consider the retail benchmarking approach (Jeon and Hurkens, 2008) that determines termination charges as a function of retail prices and show that this approach allows the regulator to increase penetration without distorting call volumes. ; This research was partially funded by the Kauffman Foundation and the Net Institute (www.netinst.org) whose financial support is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank the support from the Barcelona GSE research network and of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Jeon gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish government under SEJ2006-09993/ECON. Hurkens gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under SEJ2006-01717. ; Peer reviewed

We study access pricing rules that determine the access prices between two networks as a linear function of marginal costs and (average) retail prices set by both networks. When firms compete in linear prices, there is a unique linear rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium, independently of underlying demand conditions. When firms compete in two‐part tariffs, there exists a class of rules under which firms choose the variable price equal to the marginal cost. Therefore, the regulator can choose among these rules to pursue additional objectives such as increasing consumer surplus or promoting socially optimal investment.

The earning structure in science is flatter than in the private sector, which could cause a brain drain toward the latter. This paper studies the allocation of talent between both sectors when agents value money and fame. Assuming that the intrinsic performance is a less noisy signal of talent in science than in the private sector, we show that a good institution of science mitigates the brain drain and that introducing extra monetary incentives through the market might induce excessive diversion from pure to applied research. We finally show the optimality of a relatively flat earning structure in science.

Trabajo publicado como artículo en The RAND Journal of Economics 39(3): 822-849 (2008).-- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2008.00040.x ; We study a retail benchmarking approach to determine access prices for interconnected networks. Instead of considering fixed access charges as in the existing literature, we study access pricing rules that determine the access price that network i pays to network j as a linear function of the marginal costs and the retail prices set by both networks. In the case of competition in linear prices, we show that there is a unique linear rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium, independently of the underlying demand conditions. In the case of competition in two-part tariffs, we consider a class of access pricing rules, similar to the optimal one under linear prices but based on average retail prices. We show that firms choose the variable price equal to the marginal cost under this class of rules. Therefore, the regulator (or the competition authority) can choose one among the rules to pursue additional objectives such as consumer surplus, network coverage or investment: for instance, we show that both static and dynamic efficiency can be achieved at the same time. ; Jeon gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish government under SEJ2006-09993/ECON and Ramon y Cajal grant. Hurkens gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under SEJ2006-01717. Both authors acknowledge support through grant CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 (CSD2006-00016) and through the NET Institute www.NETinst.org.

AbstractWe investigate how platform market power affects platforms' design choices in ad‐funded two‐sided markets, where platforms may find it optimal to charge zero price on the consumer side and extract surplus on the advertising side. We consider design choices affecting both sides in opposite ways and compare private incentives with social incentives. Platforms' design biases depend crucially on whether they can charge any price on the consumer side. We apply the framework to technology adoption, privacy, and ad load choices. Our results provide a rationale for a tougher competition policy to curb market power of ad‐funded platforms with free services.