Description
What do Goggle, Facebook, mobile phones and creative commons have in common? The answer is: economics! Stefano Comino and Fabio Manenti have written a crisp and thorough treatment of the economics of information and communications technologies. This valuable book fills a real gap in the market.'
- Professor Tommaso Valletti, Imperial College Business School
'I enjoyed reading this book immensely. So will students, as they will be able to see lucidly the economics behind their inseparable electronic companions. Researchers keeping a copy at hand will have a rich reference source of the ways in which good economic theory has captured the behaviour of sophisticated firms and their customer.'
- Gianni De Fraja, The University of Nottingham, UK
This text rigorously blends theory with real-world applications to study the industrial organization of the ICT sector. Each of the self-contained chapters, which can be studied in isolation, contains theoretical models that are presented in a clear and accessible way. Throughout, a series of useful boxes complements and elucidates the theories with additional empirical/anecdotal evidence. This text will be of great interest to advanced undergraduate students with a background in microeconomics and game theory, particularly those taking courses in industrial organization, innovation economics and the economics of networks.
The authors address the most important issues and are able to explore and explain complex theories and concepts in a clear, logical and coherent manner.
Some of the topics covered include:
- the economics of innovation
- digital markets
- network externalities
- two-sided networks
- imitation, open source and file sharing
- antitrust in high-tech sectors.
Contents: 1. Industrial Organisation of High-Tech Markets 2. Digital Markets 3. Network Externalities 4. Two-Sided Networks 5. Access and Interconnection in Telecommunications 6. Cumulative Innovation in Dynamic Industries 7. Imitation, Open Source and File Sharing 8. Antitrust in High-Tech Sectors References Index
