现代产业经济学系列讲座第130期

主题：Switching Costs and Network Compatibility

主讲人：Jiawei Chen（Associate Professor ,University of California）

主持人：李玲芳副教授

时间：2016年5月16日，13：30–15：30

地点：思源楼326室

摘要：

This paper investigates how consumer switching costs affect firms' compatibility choices and social welfare in network industries. Firms face a choice between two modes of competition: make their networks incompatible and fight for market dominance, or make their networks compatible and peacefully share the market. By incentivizing firms to harvest their locked-in consumers rather than price aggressively for market dominance, switching costs tip the balance in favor of compatible networks and peaceful sharing. A public policy that reduces switching costs also tends to make networks incompatible, and results in small efficiency gains at best. Combining the policy with a mandatory compatibility policy, however, would lead to unambiguous and sizable efficiency gains.

主讲人简介：

Jiawei Chen is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Johns Hopkins University in 2005. His research focuses on analyzing firms' dynamic competition as well as regulatory and estimation issues related to such dynamics. Specific issues that he has recently examined include product compatibility and consumer switching costs in network industries, secondary markets in durable goods industries, and two-sided matching in the loan market. He has published in academic journals such as American Economic Review, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Industrial Economics, and International Journal of Industrial Organization.

产业经济学系

2016-5-4