講座題目：Network Effect and Multi-Network Sellers’Dynamic Pricing: Evidence from the US Smartphone Market

主講人：羅茸博士

講座時間：2017年6月28日14:00—15:30

講座地點：伟德平台怎么样主教樓702會議室

主講人簡介：

羅茸，佐治亞大學特裡商學院（University of Georgia, Terry School of Business）經濟學助理教授，2015年獲得賓夕法尼亞州立大學經濟學博士學位。主要研究領域為産業組織理論、應用微觀經濟學和國際經濟學。

Abstracts:

The utility a consumer realizes from owning a smartphone increases with its operating system (OS) network size. The OS network effect influences the dynamic pricing strategy of multi-OS telecom carriers, who can internalize the competition across OSs. In this paper, I first study the carriers' pricing strategy in a two-period, two-OS theoretical model. I then estimate a structural model of consumer demand and telecom carriers' dynamic pricing game for two-year contract smartphones, using product level data from August 2011 to July 2013 in the US. From both the theoretical model and the estimates, I find that multi-OS carriers choose lower prices for large OSs than smallOSs, while single-OS sellers would do the opposite in equilibrium. The estimate of the OS network effect in consumer utility is positive and significant. Counterfactual analyses show that, if the carriers specialized in different OSs or if the two-year contracts were eliminated, consumer surplus and smartphone penetration would decrease, and the big carriers' profits would increase. This paper is the first to study multi-network sellers' dynamic pricing problem and to estimate a model of dynamic continuous choice game among asymmetric multi-product firms.