The Economics of Networks

This article posits that the effect of political hazards on the choice of market entry mode varies across multinational firms based on the extent to which they face expropriation hazards from their potential joint-venture partners in the host country (the level of contractual hazards). As political hazards increase, the multinational faces an increasing threat of opportunistic expropriation by the government. Partnering with host-country firms that possess a comparative advantage in interactions with the host-country government can safeguard against this hazard. However, as contractual hazards increase, the potential benefit to the joint-venture partner of manipulating the political system for it's own benefit at the expense of the multinational increases as well, thereby diminishing the hazard-mitigating benefit of forming a joint venture. A two-stage bivariate probit estimation technique is used to test these hypotheses on a sample of 3,389 overseas manufacturing operations by 461 firms in 112 countries. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.

The institutional environment for multinational investment

We analyze the salient features of networks and point out the similarities between the economic structure of networks and the structure of vertically related industries. The analysis focuses on positive consumption and production externalities, commonly called network externalities. We discuss their sources and their effects on pricing and market structure. We distinguish between results that do not depend on the underlying industry microstructure (the macro approach) and those that do (the micro approach). We analyze the issues of compatibility, coordination to technical standards, interconnection and interoperability, and their effects on pricing and quality of services and on the value of network links in various ownership structures. We also briefly discuss the issue of interconnection fees for bottleneck.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/9702121.pdf?abstractid=1719&mirid=1&type=2

Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in efficiency, and gives vendors lucrative ex post market power – over the same buyer in the case of switching costs (or brand loyalty), or over others with network effects. Firms compete ex ante for this ex post power, using penetration pricing, introductory offers, and price wars. Such “competition for the market” or “life-cycle competition” can adequately replace ordinary compatible competition, and can even be fiercer than compatible competition by weakening differentiation. More often, however, incompatible competition not only involves direct efficiency losses but also softens competition and magnifies incumbency advantages. With network effects, established firms have little incentive to offer better deals when buyers' and complementors' expectations hinge on non-efficiency factors (especially history such as past market shares), and although competition between incompatible networks is initially unstable and sensitive to competitive offers and random events, it later “tips” to monopoly, after which entry is hard, often even too hard given incompatibility. And while switching costs can encourage small-scale entry, they discourage sellers from raiding one another's existing customers, and so also discourage more aggressive entry. Because of these competitive effects, even inefficient incompatible competition is often more profitable than compatible competition, especially for dominant firms with installed-base or expectational advantages. Thus firms probably seek incompatibility too often. We therefore favor thoughtfully pro-compatibility public policy.

/pdf/coordination-and-lock-in-competition-with-switching-costs-2homwrwf5v.pdf

Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects

This article summarizes and draws connections among diverse streams of theoretical and empirical research on the economics of privacy. We focus on the economic value and consequences of protecting and disclosing personal information, and on consumers' understanding and decisions regarding the trade-offs associated with the privacy and the sharing of personal data. We highlight how the economic analysis of privacy evolved over time, as advancements in information technology raised increasingly nuanced and complex issues associated with the protection and sharing of personal information. We find and highlight three themes that connect diverse insights from the literature. First, characterizing a single unifying economic theory of privacy is hard, because privacy issues of economic relevance arise in widely diverse contexts. Second, there are theoretical and empirical situations where the protection of privacy can both enhance, and detract from, individual and societal welfare. Third, in digital economies, consumers' ability to make informed decisions about their privacy is severely hindered, because consumers are often in a position of imperfect or asymmetric information regarding when their data is collected, for what purposes, and with what consequences. We conclude the article by highlighting some of the ongoing issues in the privacy debate of interest to economists.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2744818_code1596912.pdf?abstractid=2580411&mirid=1&type=2

The Economics of Privacy

How should a monopolist price a durable good or a new technology that is subject to network externalities? In particular, should the monopolist set a low "introductory price" to attract a "critical mass" of adopters? In this paper, we provide intuition as to when and why introductory pricing might occur in the presence of network externalities. Incomplete information about demand or asymmetric information about costs are necessary for introductory pricing to occur in equilibrium.

Monopoly Pricing With Network Externalities

http://people.stern.nyu.edu/lcabral/publications/IJIO%201999.pdf

Monopoly pricing with network externalities

We empirically estimate the substitutability of fixed and mobile services for telecommunications access using a large, U.S. household survey conducted over the period 2000-2001. Estimated cross-price elasticities confirm that second fixed line and mobile services are substitutes for one another. The extent of fixed-mobile substitution has important implications for policy toward fixed network unbundling, fixed-mobile vertical separation, and universal service.

/pdf/going-mobile-substitutability-between-fixed-and-mobile-3ggnxkrduq.pdf

Going Mobile: Substitutability Between Fixed and Mobile Access

Going mobile: substitutability between fixed and mobile access

We consider the difficulty of achieving efficient prices and investments when returns on a public utility's projects are vulnerable to opportunistic ratemaking. We model the long-term relationship between a firm and its regulator as a time-dependent supergame in which the regulator sets price ceilings to maximize surplus and the firm invests to maximize profit. We find history-dependent strategies that support self-enforcing, mutually beneficial equilibria. Equilibrium payoffs are close to the planning solution provided interest rates are small enough and capital depreciates fast enough. We concentrate on "trigger price regulation" where, in response to inefficient behavior, the regulator cuts price down to operating cost and the firm curtails investment. This mechanism performs well even with production economies and with restrictions on players' threats.

Glenn A. Woroch

Papers

Monopoly Pricing With Network Externalities

Monopoly pricing with network externalities

Going Mobile: Substitutability Between Fixed and Mobile Access

Going mobile: substitutability between fixed and mobile access

Trigger Price Regulation