Thursday, September 18, 2003

Review of Network Economics

Summer is passing into fall. And thus, we have the pleasure of seeing a new issue of the Review of Network Economics appear on the web. Augustin Ros of NERA has an article on the effect of price cap regulation on Latin American telecommunications markets. Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota explains why packet-switched data networks are less efficiently utilized than voice-grade networks. Juan Rosellon of CIDE and Harvard has an especially timely article on various regulatory means of stimulating investment in electricity transmission.

Perhaps the most interesting article is by David Evans, also of NERA. It is titled, Some Empirical Aspects of Multi-Sided Platform Industries. Here's the abstract:
Multi-Sided platform markets have two or more different groups of customers that businesses have to get and keep on board to succeed. These industries range from dating clubs (men and women), to video game consoles (game developers and users), to payment cards (cardholders and merchants), to operating system software (application developers and users). They include some of the most important industries in the economy. A survey of businesses in these industries shows that Multi-Sided platform businesses devise entry strategies to get multiple sides of the market on board and devise pricing, product, and other competitive strategies to keep multiple customer groups on a common platform that internalizes externalities across members of these groups.

No comments:

Post a Comment