I examine interconnection decisions of differentiated firms. I find that previous results that firms never interconnect enough do not hold. In a Hotelling model consumers may suffer from interconnection, and firms may interconnect when it is not socially optimal. The firms interconnect too much when the network effects are steeper - this makes firms compete much less aggressively after interconnection, raising prices for consumers and profits for firms. Price and profit rise results holds under quality and installed base asymmetries, or only some firms in the industry interconnecting. More dimensions of differentiation make interconnection less attractive.
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Paper provided by NET Institute in its series Working Papers with number
08-07.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
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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.
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