[Econmaster2012] Research Seminar in Economics

[Frank Stähler]

Dear all,

The presenter in this week's "Research Seminar in Economics" on Tuesday, 
December 3, is Hans Jarle Kind from the NHH Bergen. The title of his 
talk will be

"Turning the Page on Business Formats for Digital Platforms: Does 
Apple's Agency Model Soften Competition?" (joint work with Ø. Foros and
Greg Shaffer).

The seminar starts at 18.00 h in Room E09, Mohlstr. 36. You can find an 
abstract of the paper below.

Everybody is welcome.

Best wishes,
Frank Stähler


Abstract:
The agency model used by Apple and other platform providers such as 
Google allows upstream firms (content providers like book publishers and 
developers of apps) to choose the retail prices of their products (RPM) 
subject to a fixed revenue-sharing rule. We show that (i) this leads to 
higher prices if the competitive pressure is higher downstream than 
upstream; (ii) upstream firms earn positive surplus even when platform 
providers have all the bargaining power; and (iii) with asymmetric 
business formats (where only some platform providers use the agency 
model), a retail most-favored-nation clause leads to retail prices that 
resemble the outcome under industry-wide RPM.