Essays on the Effects of Digitization on Media Economics

Publishing Brands and Digitization: Strategic Issues and Key Variables. Digital Media Economics: How did Bit-Encoding Techniques Change the Business? A Review of Economic Literature through a Value-Chain Approach. Subsidising Network Technology Adoption. The Case of Publishers and E-readers: is there a Need for Vertical Agreements? Pricing Copyrighted Contents in the Digital Era: The case of Magazines’ Industry.Publishing Brands and Digitization: Strategic Issues and Key Variables. Digital Media Economics: How did Bit-Encoding Techniques Change the Business? A Review of Economic Literature through a Value-Chain Approach. Subsidising Network Technology Adoption. The Case of Publishers and E-readers: is there a Need for Vertical Agreements? Pricing Copyrighted Contents in the Digital Era: The case of Magazines’ Industry.LUISS PhD Thesi

Software Marketing on the Internet: the Use of Samples and Repositories

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free samples but are more reluctant to do so if they are well known, and even when they do are less likely to be listed on shareware repositories. I then proceed to use four types of Probit-based models to corroborate the findings from the theoretical model.Shareware; Software; Internet; Distribution; Intermediation; Directory; Repository; Advertising; Brand; Reputation; Asymmetric Information; Search; Sample

Digital Content Strategies

This paper studies content strategies for online publishers of digital information goods. It examines sampling strategies and compares their performance to paid content and free content strategies. A sampling strategy, where some of the content is offered for free and consumers are charged for access to the rest, is known as a "metered model" in the newspaper industry. We analyze optimal decisions concerning the size of the sample and the price of the paid content when sampling serves the dual purpose of disclosing content quality and generating advertising revenue. We show in a reduced-form model how the publisher's optimal ratio of advertising revenue to sales revenue is linked to characteristics of both the content market and the advertising market. We assume that consumers learn about content quality from the free samples in a Bayesian fashion. Surprisingly, we find that it can be optimal for the publisher to generate advertising revenue by offering free samples even when sampling reduces both prior quality expectations and content demand. In addition, we show that it can be optimal for the publisher to refrain from revealing quality through free samples when advertising effectiveness is low and content quality is high

The European Commission's Case Against Microsoft: Fool Monti Kills Bill?

Refereed Working Papers / of international relevanc

Abusing data dominance in the digital market. The application of merger control and article 102 TFEU to data-related conducts.

The internet and digital technologies revolutionized the economy. Regulating the digital market has become a priority for the European Union. While promoting innovation and development, EU institutions must assure that the digital market maintains a competitive structure. Among the numerous elements characterizing the digital sector, users’ data are particularly important. Digital services are centered around personal data, the accumulation of which contributed to the centralization of market power in the hands of a few large providers. As a result, data-driven mergers and data-related abuses gained a central role for the purposes of EU antitrust enforcement. In light of these considerations, this work aims at assessing whether EU competition law is well-suited to address data-driven mergers and data-related abuses of dominance. These conducts are of crucial importance to the maintenance of competition in the digital sector, insofar as the accumulation of users’ data constitutes a fundamental competitive advantage. To begin with, part 1 addresses the specific features of the digital market and their impact on the definition of the relevant market and the assessment of dominance by antitrust authorities. Secondly, part 2 analyzes the EU’s case law on data-driven mergers to verify if merger control is well-suited to address these concentrations. Thirdly, part 3 discusses abuses of dominance in the phase of data collection and the legal frameworks applicable to these conducts. Fourthly, part 4 focuses on access to “essential” datasets and the indirect effects of anticompetitive conducts on rivals’ ability to access users’ information. Finally, Part 5 discusses differential pricing practices implemented online and based on personal data. As it will be assessed, the combination of an efficient competition law enforcement and the auspicial adoption of a specific regulation seems to be the best solution to face the challenges raised by “data-related dominance”

Software Marketing on the Internet: the Use of Samples and Repositories

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free samples but are more reluctant to do so if they are well known, and even when they do are less likely to be listed on shareware repositories. I then proceed to use four types of Probit-based models to corroborate the findings from the theoretical model

The Roles of Corporate IT Infastructure and their Impact on IS Effectiveness

In the strategic alignment model of Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) [1] IT infrastructure has an important but only implicitly defined role. According to evolving literature, IT infrastructure serves many different purposes in large companies. We outline the main missions (roles) of the corporate-wide IT infrastructure and its contribution to IS effectiveness and study the relationship of IT infrastructure with alignment processes and strategic integration. Our empirical tests with data from almost one hundred large companies resulted in three IT infrastructure roles, which reflect the IS communality, strategic, and flexibility dimensions of the corporate-wide IT infrastructure. The roles were not symmetrically related to the IS effectiveness and alignment perspectives. IT infrastructure roles had a significant interplay with strategic integration in improving IS effectiveness. However, the interplay of IT infrastructure roles with alignment perspectives had only marginal effects. Implications of the results for research and practice are discussed

Law for the Platform Economy

This Article: explores patterns of legal-institutional change in the emerging, platform-driven economy. Its starting premise is that the platform is not simply a new business model, a new social technology, or a new infrastructural formation (although it is also all of those things). Rather, it is the core organizational form of the emerging informational economy. Platforms do not enter or expand markets; they replace (and rematerialize) them. The article argues that legal institutions, including both entitlements and regulatory institutions, have systematically facilitated the platform economy\u27s emergence. It first describes the evolution of the platform as a mode of economic (re)organization and introduces the ways that platforms restructure both economic exchange and patterns of information flow more generally. It then explores some of the ways that actions and interventions by and on behalf of platform businesses are reshaping the landscape of legal entitlements and obligations. Finally, it describes challenges that platform-based intermediation of the information environment has posed for existing regulatory institutions and traces some of the emerging institutional responses