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International audience; We propose an analysis of platform competition based on the academic literature with a view towards competition policy. First, we discuss to which extent competition can emerge in digital markets and show which forms it can take. In particular, we underline the role of dynamics, but also of platform differentiation, consumers multi-homing and beliefs to allow competition in platform markets. Second, we analyze competition policy issues and discuss how rules designed for standard markets can perform in two-sided markets. We show that multi-sided externalities create new opportunities for anti-competitive conducts, often related to pricing and contractual imperfections.

We investigate the effects of price discrimination on prices, profits, and consumer surplus when (a) at least one competing firm can use consumers’ private information to price discriminate yet (b) consumers can prevent such use by paying a “privacy cost.” Unlike a monopolist, competing duopolists do not always benefit from a higher privacy cost because each firm’s profit decreases—and consumer surplus increases—with that cost. Under such competition, the optimal strategy for an owner of consumer data that sells information in a single block is selling to only one firm, thereby maximizing the stakes for rival buyers. The resulting inefficiencies imply that policy makers should devote more attention to discouraging exclusivity deals and less to ensuring that consumers can easily protect their privacy. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2989 . This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing.

We study the effects of property rights over the use of data on market outcomes. To do so, we consider a model in which a monopolistic firm offers a service to a set of heterogeneous users. The use of the service generates valuable data, but data monetization entails a privacy cost for users. A trade-off emerges between under-processing and over-monetization of data. We show that both the firm and users prefer the users (the firm) to own the rights for low (high) values of data. We further discuss the robustness of our results when allowing more possible contracts for the data owner and show that the main trade-off is robust to these extensions. (JEL D82, D86, K11, L12)

We consider a network that intermediates traffic between the consumers and providers of free content. We analyze the implications of offering sponsored data plans that allow content providers to pay for traffic on behalf of their consumers. Sponsored data boosts consumption of high-value content, but the network may charge higher prices to consumers for non-sponsored content. The welfare effects of allowing sponsored data depend on the proportion of content targeted and the value of such content. Our analysis is conducted under two-sided prices and under one-sided pricing (only consumers pay), and it is extended to the case of network competition.

We analyze licensing contracts between informed innovators and developers exerting profit-increasing effort. Those contracts must simultaneously induce innovators to convey information on the value of their ideas, while inducing developers to exert effort and protecting the innovators' intellectual property rights. We show that the best innovators signal themselves by taking more royalties even if it reduces the developers' share of returns and their incentives. Moreover, royalties are more likely to be used when property rights are easy to enforce and pre-contractual evidence on innovation quality is hard to produce.

This article analyzes the shape of contracts between local governments and the contractors they hire to run public facilities on their behalf. Governments are privately informed about the quality of the facility while risk neutral contractors undertake a non-verifiable operating eort. The design of the contract signals the quality of the facility in such a way that the better this quality, the greater the share of operating risk kept by the government. This feature reduces the agent’s marginal incentives, creating a trade-o between signaling and moral hazard. We provide extensions of our framework in several directions allowing for risk aversion on the agent’s side, double moral hazard and political delegation. The model is supported by some stylized facts from the water industry.

This paper studies to what extent economic integration, or globalization, influences the accountability of politicians. Assuming that politicians are controlled by the voters through reelection rules, we analyze to what extent economic integration affects the form of those rules and the efforts made by politicians. We define economic integration by the existence of policies and shocks interdependences between countries. Then, from a political point of view, this integration is shown to be a two-sided phenomenon. Shock-interdependence allows yardstick comparison, increases political accountability and therefore efforts while policy-interdependence induces a lack of responsibility and harms the extent to which politicians can be controlled.

National audience; Une entreprise doit investir pour fournir un service à une autorité publique. L’autorité publique peut, une fois l’investissement privé et l’incertitude concernant la valeur du service réalisés, fournir ce service par ses propres moyens. Si une telle intervention peut améliorer l’efficacité ex post, elle réduit les incitations à investir ex ante et le bien-être social. Nous étudions différentes modalités de l’intervention de l’autorité publique (possibilité d’investir seulement, ou possibilité de négocier avec l’entreprise sous la menace de duplication de l’investissement) suivant l’information qui est à sa disposition. Nos résultats suggèrent qu’autoriser l’autorité publique à négocier avec l’entreprise améliore le bien-être.

This paper investigates the effects of price discrimination on prices, profits and consumer surplus, when one or more competing firms can use consumers' private information to price discriminate and consumers can pay a privacy cost to avoid it. While a monopolist always benefits from higher privacy costs, this is not true in the competing duopoly case. In this last case, firms' individual profits are decreasing while consumer surplus is increasing in the privacy cost. Finally, under competition, we show that the optimal selling strategy for the owner of consumer data consists in dealing exclusively with one firm in order to create maximal competition between the winner and the loser of data. This brings inefficiencies, and we show that policy makers should concentrate their attention on exclusivity deals rather than making it easier for consumers to protect their privacy.

Cet article offre une perspective nouvelle sur les accords environnementaux, perspective basée sur la théorie des mécanismes incitatifs. Nous montrons l'existence d'un arbitrage fondamental entre incitations et participation et présentons une condition qui doit être nécessairement satisfaite pour implémenter les efforts de premier rang. Nous discutons ensuite les difficultés à satisfaire cette condition selon que l'option de statu quo qui prévaut lorsque la négociation collective échoue est un scénario non coopératif ou une configuration basée sur les droits acquis. Nous montrons qu'un marché de droits permet d'atteindre des niveaux d'effort efficaces si cette condition est satisfaite. Nous discutons enfin quelques propriétés des mécanismes de second rang qui émergent dans le cas contraire.

We consider a network that intermediates traffic between free content providers and consumers. While consumers do not know the traffic cost when deciding on consumption, a content provider knows his cost but may not control the consumption. We study how pricing consumers’ and content providers’ sides allows both profit extraction from the network and efficient information transmission. In the case of uniform tariff, we argue that a positive price-cap on the charge to content is optimal (with no constrain on the consumer side). Proposing menus helps signaling useful information to consumers and therefore adjusting consumption to traffic cost. In the case of menus, we show that optimal mechanisms consist in letting the content producers choose between different categories associated with different prices for content and consumers. Our results are robust to competition between ISPs and to competition between contents. We also show that when (competitive) content providers choose at small cost between a pay and a free business model, a price-cap at cost on the price for content improves efficiency.

Le developpement des NTIC et l’ouverture a la concurrence de nouveaux secteurs industriels ont conduit a une generalisation des pratiques de fidelisation et de suivi de la clientele.Cet article presente l’analyse economique de ces pratiques, de leur impact sur la concurrence et le bien-etre des consommateurs. Nous expliquons pourquoi, dans un cadre monopolistique, la fidelisation peut se comprendre comme une facon d’inciter a la consommation, au profit de la firme et parfois egalement des consommateurs. Nous montrons ensuite que, dans un univers plus concurrentiel, cette pratique tend a intensifier le degre de concurrence effective, au benefice quasi exclusif des consommateurs. Nous discutons enfin de l’impact pro ou anticoncurrentiel de pratiques reliees, par exemple les contrats de long terme et les offres de retention.

his paper discusses the feasibility and performances of simple mechanisms to implement international environmental agreements in the multilateral externalities context of global warming. Asymmetric information and voluntary participation by sovereign and heterogeneous countries are key constraints on the design of those agreements. Mechanisms must prevent two sorts of free-riding problems - free riding in effort provision and free riding in participation. As markets might fail to solve simultaneously those two problems, we construct instead a simple menu of options that trades off the provision of incentives for participating countries and the provision of incentives to participate. With such a mechanism, all countries voluntarily contribute to a fund, although at different intensities, but only the most efficient ones effectively reduce their pollution below its 'business as usual' level.

We reconsider the question of the optimal level of termination fees between communication networks in the context of heterogeneous usage and elastic participation. The interaction between these two features yields new insights; in our model: i) The profit maximizing reciprocal termination fee is above marginal cost; ii) the welfare maximizing termination fee is also above cost; iii) the welfare-maximizing termination fee is below the profit-maximizing one in the absence of termination-based price discrimination, but can be above it otherwise.

This paper analyzes the relationship between a national regulator, an incumbent and a local government in a context where investment in a new network has to be undertaken. In the light of the recent debates on the competition between private firms and local governments, we analyze the limits to be put on the local public intervention in these markets. We show that banning local government intervention can be welfare-enhancing either in the presence inter-districts externality or with asymmetric information or in case of conflicting objectives between the regulator and local governments.

International audience; We extend a simple version of the citizen candidacy model (developed by Osborne-Slivinski (1996) and Besley-Coate (1997)) to an asymmetric information setting, in which the type of a given individual is assumed to be private information. Focusing on a particular class of perfect Bayesian equilibria, we show that there exist only two kinds of equilibria. In the first one, both non-median types become candidates and those equilibria generalize to any number of (potential) candidates. In the second one, only one of the non-median types chooses to become candidates for the election and those equilibria hold for a number of (potential) candidates at most equal to 3. This is in sharp contrast with the complete information framework in which only the median type individuals stand for office when the entry cost is sufficiently low.

We analyze contracting between an innovator endowed with an idea and a project developer. The innovator has private information about the value of his idea, whereas the developer must exert some non-verifiable effort at the development stage. The developer may also threaten to leave the relationship after being informed on the value of the idea. The equilibrium contracts distort downwards the developer’s incentives, but differently so depending on the strength of intellectual property rights (IPR). In particular, with intermediate IPR, only pooling contracts arise, with a limited amount of information being revealed at equilibrium.

This paper develops a two-country model where each country invests in a local public good generating positive cross-countries externalities. In a repeated game setting where the level of public good depends on a non-observable effort by each country plus a random shock, we characterize the existence condition of a cut-off trigger strategy equilibrium inducing full cooperation. Moreover, we show that introducing a small positive correlation between the two country-specific shocks gives rise to a manipulation of information thereby restricting the prospects of cooperation.