讲座题目：Network Effect and Multi-Network Sellers’Dynamic Pricing: Evidence from the US Smartphone Market

主讲人：罗茸博士

讲座时间：2017年6月28日14:00—15:30

讲座地点：中央财经大学主教楼702会议室

主讲人简介：

罗茸，佐治亚大学特里商学院（University of Georgia, Terry School of Business）经济学助理教授，2015年获得宾夕法尼亚州立大学经济学博士学位。主要研究领域为产业组织理论、应用微观经济学和国际经济学。

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.