The article analyzes network effects on the German GSM mobile telephony market. The authors use an ACE-approach to examine how a new competitor can successfully gain ground in the market with a discount-pricing strategy. In particular they study the impact of several elements of a mobile phone contract like on-net-, landlineor off-net-fees on the competitor’s market share. It turns out that it ...

This paper introduces an artificial payment card market in which we model the interactions between consumers, merchants and competing card issuers with the aim of determining the optimal pricing structure for card issuers. We allow card issuers to charge consumers and merchants with fixed fees, provide net benefits from card usage and engage in marketing activities. The demand by consumers and ...

The second stage consultation of healthcare reform in Hong Kong was launched in late 2010. One of the key features in the healthcare reform is the use of packaged charging based on Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG) structure, for reimbursement of medical fees in order to enhance cost certainty and transparency in private healthcare services. The objective of the study was to investigate the comment...

Interactive pricing mechanisms integrate customers into the price-setting process by letting them submit bids. Name-your-own-price auctions are such an interactive pricing mechanism, where buyers’ bids denote the final price of a product or service in case they surpass a secret threshold price set by the seller. If buyers are given the flexibility to bid repeatedly, they might try to incrementa...

In a series of influential papers, Lester Brickman (2003a, 2003b, 2004) has argued that the income and effective hourly rate of tort lawyers using contingent fees has increased by 1400% since 1960 and that the market for contingent fee lawyers is uncompetitive as evidenced by lack of price advertising and uniform pricing across practitioners, cases and time. He also argues that contingent fee l...