This Paper examines competition between a dominant network and a challenging network with third-degree or perfect price-discrimination, allowing for arbitrary configurations of network externalities, as well as horizontal and vertical product differentiation. Domination in the coordination game played by consumers is achieved through an adequate resolution that favours one firm over the other, and is interpreted as a reputation effect. Price-discrimination in this context has a strong impact because cross-subsidisation allows a firm to coordinate the choices of consumers, reducing the impact of reputation effects. Competitive strategies subsidize the participation of some consumers in order to create a bandwagon effect on others. This drastically intensifies competition and reduces average equilibrium prices. Because bandwagon effects are due to the incompatibility of networks, under perfect price-discrimination, both networks prefer to be compatible. Price-discrimination promotes efficiency by reducing the extent of excess inertia, but new features of excess momentum and market instability appear. A network may also have incentives to unilaterally degrade the quality for some targeted group of consumers in order to weaken competition.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
2883.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - General D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search, Learning, and Information L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Nicholas Economides, 1995.
"The Economics of Networks,"
Working Papers
94-24, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics, revised Sep 1995.
[Downloadable!]
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)