IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revind/v66y2025i4d10.1007_s11151-023-09928-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Local Competition, Multimarket Contact, and Product Quality: Evidence From Internet Service Provision

Author

Listed:
  • Kyle Wilson

    (Pomona College)

Abstract

I investigate the effect of competition on quality in the internet service provision industry: I examine both local competition within markets and multimarket contact among firms across markets. This industry offers an ideal setting, as quality is both objective and measurable. I use data from speedtest.net from 2008 to 2014 to estimate a reduced-form model of the effects of local competition and multimarket contact on realized consumer download speeds. I find that increased multimarket contact leads to decreased download speeds, which is consistent with the mutual forbearance hypothesis. I also find that duopolies lead to faster download speeds than do monopolies, but that further increases in the number of competitors decrease speeds.

Suggested Citation

  • Kyle Wilson, 2025. "Local Competition, Multimarket Contact, and Product Quality: Evidence From Internet Service Provision," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 66(4), pages 439-467, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:66:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11151-023-09928-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s11151-023-09928-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11151-023-09928-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11151-023-09928-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Multimarket contact; Telecommunications; Internet; Broadband; Product quality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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
    • L96 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Telecommunications

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:66:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11151-023-09928-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.