The strategic use of download limits by a monopoly platform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Economides, Nicholas; Hermalin, Benjamin E.
• 署名单位: New York University; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12087
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 297-327
• 关键词: network neutrality; ECONOMICS; INVESTMENT

摘要

We offer a new explanation for why platforms, such as Internet service providers and mobile-phone networks, offer plans with download limits: through one of two mechanisms, doing so causes content providers to reduce prices or improve quality. This generates greater surplus for consumers, which a platform captures via higher consumer access fees. Even accounting for congestion externalities, a platform limits downloads more than would be welfare maximizing; indeed, by so much, that barring such practices can be welfare superior to what a platform would do. Paradoxically, a platform will install more bandwidth when it can restrict downloads than when it cannot.