IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(200109)1573_359teofia_2.0.tx_2-c.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Economics of Free Internet Access

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Haan

Abstract

In an increasing number of European countries, Internet service providers offer free Internet access. Telephone companies are willing to pay these providers based on the amount of traffic they generate. In this paper, we explain these phenomena. We argue that, by offering a contract that pays the provider a certain lump sum conditional on it providing free Internet access, the telephone company solves a double marginalization problem. We analyze this in a simple model in which only the Internet access market is studied, and in a richer model, where the regular telephone market is also taken into account.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Haan, 2001. "The Economics of Free Internet Access," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 157(3), pages 359-379, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200109)157:3_359:teofia_2.0.tx_2-c
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/the-economics-of-free-internet-access-1016280932456013621260
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    2. Nirvikar Singh & Xavier Vives, 1984. "Price and Quantity Competition in a Differentiated Duopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 546-554, Winter.
    3. Joseph J. Spengler, 1950. "Vertical Integration and Antitrust Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58, pages 347-347.
    4. Walter Y. Oi, 1971. "A Disneyland Dilemma: Two-Part Tariffs for a Mickey Mouse Monopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 85(1), pages 77-96.
    5. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fioramanti, Marco, 2005. "Free Internet access: When is it suitable?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 302-316, July.
    2. C. Deligiorgi & A. Vavoulas & Ch. Michalakelis & D. Varoutas & Th. Sphicopoulos, 2007. "On the construction of price index and the definition of factors affecting tariffs of ADSL connections across Europe," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 171-183, October.
    3. Rajeev Goel & Edward Hsieh & Michael Nelson & Rati Ram, 2006. "Demand elasticities for Internet services," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(9), pages 975-980.
    4. Kam Yu & Marc Prud'homme, 2010. "Econometric issues in hedonic price indices: the case of internet service providers," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(15), pages 1973-1994.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chakraborty, Abhishek & Mandal, Prasenjit, 2021. "Channel efficiency and retailer tier dominance in a supply chain with a common manufacturer," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 100-121.
    2. Filippo Vergara Caffarelli, 2007. "Merge and Compete: Strategic Incentives for Vertical Integration," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 97(5), pages 203-244, September.
    3. Simon Loertscher & Leslie Marx, 2014. "An Oligopoly Model for Analyzing and Evaluating (Re)-Assignments of Spectrum Licenses," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 45(3), pages 245-273, November.
    4. Amir, Rabah & Jin, Jim Y., 2001. "Cournot and Bertrand equilibria compared: substitutability, complementarity and concavity," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(3-4), pages 303-317, March.
    5. Sherif Nasser & Danko Turcic, 2016. "To Commit or Not to Commit: Revisiting Quantity vs. Price Competition in a Differentiated Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1719-1733, June.
    6. Desmond (Ho-Fu) Lo & Stephen W. Salant, 2016. "The strategic use of early bird discounts for dealers," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 97-127, June.
    7. Jean J. Gabszewicz & Jacques-François Thisse, 2000. "Microeconomic theories of imperfect competition," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 37(1), pages 47-99.
    8. James A. Brander & Barbara J. Spencer, 2015. "Endogenous Horizontal Product Differentiation under Bertrand and Cournot Competition: Revisiting the Bertrand Paradox," NBER Working Papers 20966, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Li, Guangzhong & Li, Jie, 2018. "Managerial diversion, product market competition, and firm performance," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 240-264.
    10. R. Cellini & L. Lambertini, 2000. "Differential Games and Oligopoly Theory: An Overview," Working Papers 369, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    11. João Montez, 2015. "Controlling opportunism in vertical contracting when production precedes sales," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(3), pages 650-670, September.
    12. Elodie Adida & Georgia Perakis, 2014. "The effect of supplier capacity on the supply chain profit," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 223(1), pages 1-52, December.
    13. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & Victor Tremblay, 2012. "Market Power and Technology," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 40(2), pages 139-146, March.
    14. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, January.
    15. Raffaele Fiocco & Dongyu Guo, 2015. "Mergers between regulated firms with unknown efficiency gains," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 19(4), pages 299-326, December.
    16. Yang, Shu-Jung Sunny & Anderson, Edward James, 2014. "Competition through capacity investment under asymmetric existing capacities and costs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 237(1), pages 217-230.
    17. Elizabeth Schroeder & Victor J. Tremblay, 2014. "Union Bargaining in an Oligopoly Market with Cournot-Bertrand Competition: Welfare and Policy Implications," Economies, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-14, March.
    18. Joachim Heinzel & Simon Hoof, 2020. "Oligopolistic Upstream Competition with Differentiated Inputs," Working Papers CIE 129, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    19. Luca Lambertini & Manuela Mosca, 2014. "The Bertrand Paradox, the Useless Auctioneer and the Launhardt Model," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3-4), pages 170-183, December.
    20. Evangelia N. Kaselimi & Theo E. Notteboom & Bruno De Borger, 2011. "A game theoretical approach to competition between multi-user terminals: the impact of dedicated terminals," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 395-414, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • L42 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Vertical Restraints; Resale Price Maintenance; Quantity Discounts

    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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200109)157:3_359:teofia_2.0.tx_2-c. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Thomas Wolpert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/jite .

    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.