This paper investigates the structure of the payment card market, with consumers and merchants basing their subscription decisions on different information sets. We find that the market structure depends crucially on ...This paper investigates the structure of the payment card market, with consumers and merchants basing their subscription decisions on different information sets. We find that the market structure depends crucially on the information set on which consumers and merchants base their subscription decisions. In the studied case, we observe that a market with few cards dominating only emerges when decisions are based on very limited information. Under the same conditions using a complete information set, all cards survive in the long run. The use of an agent-based model, focusing on the interactions between merchants and consumers, as a basis for subscription decisions allows us to investigate the dynamics of the market and the effect of the indirect network externalities rather than investigating only equilibrium outcomes.展开更多
We investigate the effects of consumer privacy concerns on the pricing and personal data collection strategy of an online platform.The online platform derives revenues from disclosing consumer information to firms.Fir...We investigate the effects of consumer privacy concerns on the pricing and personal data collection strategy of an online platform.The online platform derives revenues from disclosing consumer information to firms.Firms compete for the information in order to enable them to price discriminate and thus derive revenues from consumer purchases.A novel aspect of our research is that we allow the online platform to sell only a subset of consumer data.We develop analytical models where consumers can/cannot protect their privacy.Our analysis yields three main conclusions.First,in the monopoly case,we find that when the consumer privacy disclosure aversion cost is relatively low,it is optimal for the platform to sell all consumer information to the firm.Second,in the duopoly case,we illustrate that when the consumer privacy disclosure aversion cost is relatively low,the platform will sell all consumer information to only one firm;when the cost is moderate,the platform will choose to sell the information of only some consumers and to only one firm;when the cost is relatively high,the platform will select only some of the consumers and sell their information to both firms.Third,it will be better for the platform to provide the information protection service for free when the privacy cost is low.展开更多
In this study we use the experiences from the service industry and explore pre-requisites of the e-health market which will need to achieve to stimulate both sides of the market (vendors, healthcare organizations, gov...In this study we use the experiences from the service industry and explore pre-requisites of the e-health market which will need to achieve to stimulate both sides of the market (vendors, healthcare organizations, government, institutions, corporations and services organizations) to interact with each other and develop demand driven services and social innovations. The results presented in this paper may be of interest for decision makers, industries (e.g. software or technology designers), small and medium enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurs with an interest in becoming a part of the e-health market, and for consumers (e.g. healthcare personnel and patients) that are willing to influence the market through their choices. The outcomes of the study shown that the role of virtual brokers is essential to the further development of a sustainable e-health market globally because its role as catalyst for interaction between the two-sides of the markets, its effects on the reduction of competitive constrains, its effects on the accessibility to broader network of actors and its effects on the support of public-private exchanges of knowledge and experience.展开更多
Investing on value-added service （VAS） amplifies users＇ participation and platform profit. However, the investing resource is usually limited in practice. This paper investigates VAS investing and pricing strategie...Investing on value-added service （VAS） amplifies users＇ participation and platform profit. However, the investing resource is usually limited in practice. This paper investigates VAS investing and pricing strategies for a two-sided platform under investing resource constraint. We reveal that with VAS investment, Subsidizing can still be done to enlarge users＇ demand, even when the investing cost becomes higher. For optimal pricing strategies, the network effect will be the dominating determinant if the gap between two marginal cross-side benefits （i.e. the benefit that users obtain when each new user join the other side of the platform） is large. Interestingly, we show that with the increase of the marginal investing cost, users might either be priced higher or lower. If the marginal investing cost increases to a high level, and the gap between the two marginal cross-side benefits is large, lowering the access fee for users possessing the higher eross-side network effect does not necessarily compensate more profit loss caused by higher cost. Moreover, after VAS is developed, raising the access fee for those whose marginal investing benefit is large does not necessarily generate more profit as well. The opposite strategy further enlarges users＇ utility, and promotes the investment to benefit more users.展开更多
Nowadays,more and more transactions or interactions like online dating and shopping are completed on two-sided platforms involving two groups of agents.On these two-sided platforms,there often exist cross-network effe...Nowadays,more and more transactions or interactions like online dating and shopping are completed on two-sided platforms involving two groups of agents.On these two-sided platforms,there often exist cross-network effects,i.e., the benefits that agents at one side receive are positively related to the number of agents at the other side,and vice versa.This paper considers such two-sided platforms,where the platforms offer a certain service to attract agents of both sides to join the platforms,and then charge agents who join the platforms a lump-sum fee to gain the profit.We present service and pricing strategies for both monopolistic and duopolistic platforms,respectively.We also investigate the impact of platforms'life cycle on their service and pricing strategies.Some managerial implications are shown.展开更多
Phase transitions are being used increasingly to probe the collective behaviors of social human systems. In this study, we propose a different way of investigating such transitions in a human system by establishing a ...Phase transitions are being used increasingly to probe the collective behaviors of social human systems. In this study, we propose a different way of investigating such transitions in a human system by establishing a two-sided minority game model. A new type of agents who can actively transfer resources are added to our artificial bipartite resource-allocation market. The degree of deviation from equilibria is characterized by the entropy-like quantity of market complexity. Under different threshold values, Qth, two phases are found by calculating the exponents of the associated power spectra. For large values of Qth, the general motion of strategies for the agents is relatively periodic whereas for low values of Qth, the motion becomes chaotic. The transition occurs abruptly at a critical value of Qty. Our simulation results were also tested based on human experiments. The results of this study suggest that a chaotic-periodic transition related to the quantity of market information should exist in most bipartite markets, thereby allowing better control of such a transi- tion and providing a better understanding of the endogenous emergence of business cycles from the perspective of quantum mechanics.展开更多
In this paper,we investigate two competing pay-tv platforms or free-to-air media platforms that consist of two groups of agents:viewers and advertisers.The pay-tv platforms can receive revenues from charging viewers p...In this paper,we investigate two competing pay-tv platforms or free-to-air media platforms that consist of two groups of agents:viewers and advertisers.The pay-tv platforms can receive revenues from charging viewers pay-per-view prices and advertising,while the free-to-air platforms can only obtain all incomes from advertising.We discuss and compare advertising intensities and program content provisions of the two competing media platforms.Our findings show that if the extent to which viewers dislike advertising(the nuisance for advertising)is more massive than the marginal benefit that advertisers receive from an additional viewer,the pay-tv stations tend to maximally differentiate their program content and charge the viewers higher pay-per-view prices.If the nuisance approaches to the marginal benefit,however,both stations should offer similar program content,and charge the viewers lower prices under certain conditions.Particularly,if both platforms provide duplicated content,they should subsidize the viewers.In contrast,we show that the free-to-air media platforms never duplicate program content with a positive nuisance for advertising,and tend to offer maximal differentiated content if the nuisance is sufficiently large.Moreover,we reveal that if the viewers greatly dislike advertising(care less about advertising),the advertising volume of the pay-tv platforms is lower(higher)than that of the free-to-air platforms.Finally,we extend our base model to the case in which a pay-tv platform competes against a free-to-air station,and numerically show that the profit of the pay-tv platform may be larger or smaller than that of the free-to-air station.展开更多
Establishing a two-sided market （specialized market） is an effective way to build a national value chain （NVC）. The Chinese knock-off wireless handset industry has succeeded in building a miniature version of an N...Establishing a two-sided market （specialized market） is an effective way to build a national value chain （NVC）. The Chinese knock-off wireless handset industry has succeeded in building a miniature version of an NVC based on the Huaqiangbei Market, a typical specialized market. ＂Ihis paper begins b）, analyzing the differences in the industrial chains of knock-off and traditional wireless handsets and concludes that due to lacking after-sales service, the value chain of knock-off wireless handsets is consumer-driven, with a focus on manufacturing and marketing. Analysis of the knock-off wireless handset-based NVC reveals that multi-level demands, a maturing industry and adaptive innovation are three pre-conditions for Chinese manufacturing to build an NVC in a two-sided market. Given the uneven scale and techniques among knock-off handset makers, their addiction to the low-end market and imperfect value chains constructed using the ＂knockoff pattern＂ this paper proposes that China can break these bottlenecks by letting the specialized and unilateral markets develop closer to each other and by providing governmental guidance in the specialized market.展开更多
The stability of sampled-data systems is investigated using a new type of Lyapunov functional.The interval from the sampling point t_(k) to t_(k+1) is assumed to be a sampling interval.By fully utilizing the character...The stability of sampled-data systems is investigated using a new type of Lyapunov functional.The interval from the sampling point t_(k) to t_(k+1) is assumed to be a sampling interval.By fully utilizing the characteristic information on the whole sampling interval,a new two-sided closed-loop Lyapunov functional is proposed,which utilizes the information on both the intervals from the sampling point t to k_(t) and from t to t_(k+1).Based on the two-sided closed-loop Lyapunov functional and modified free-matrix-based inequality,a less conservative stability criterion is derived for a sampled-data control system,and three numerical examples are provided to verify the effectiveness and reduced conservativeness of the proposed method.Furthermore,the proposed method is applied to solve the stability problem of electric power markets,and the practical significance of reducing the conservativeness is discussed.展开更多
文摘This paper investigates the structure of the payment card market, with consumers and merchants basing their subscription decisions on different information sets. We find that the market structure depends crucially on the information set on which consumers and merchants base their subscription decisions. In the studied case, we observe that a market with few cards dominating only emerges when decisions are based on very limited information. Under the same conditions using a complete information set, all cards survive in the long run. The use of an agent-based model, focusing on the interactions between merchants and consumers, as a basis for subscription decisions allows us to investigate the dynamics of the market and the effect of the indirect network externalities rather than investigating only equilibrium outcomes.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.71771179,72171176 and 72021002).
文摘We investigate the effects of consumer privacy concerns on the pricing and personal data collection strategy of an online platform.The online platform derives revenues from disclosing consumer information to firms.Firms compete for the information in order to enable them to price discriminate and thus derive revenues from consumer purchases.A novel aspect of our research is that we allow the online platform to sell only a subset of consumer data.We develop analytical models where consumers can/cannot protect their privacy.Our analysis yields three main conclusions.First,in the monopoly case,we find that when the consumer privacy disclosure aversion cost is relatively low,it is optimal for the platform to sell all consumer information to the firm.Second,in the duopoly case,we illustrate that when the consumer privacy disclosure aversion cost is relatively low,the platform will sell all consumer information to only one firm;when the cost is moderate,the platform will choose to sell the information of only some consumers and to only one firm;when the cost is relatively high,the platform will select only some of the consumers and sell their information to both firms.Third,it will be better for the platform to provide the information protection service for free when the privacy cost is low.
文摘In this study we use the experiences from the service industry and explore pre-requisites of the e-health market which will need to achieve to stimulate both sides of the market (vendors, healthcare organizations, government, institutions, corporations and services organizations) to interact with each other and develop demand driven services and social innovations. The results presented in this paper may be of interest for decision makers, industries (e.g. software or technology designers), small and medium enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurs with an interest in becoming a part of the e-health market, and for consumers (e.g. healthcare personnel and patients) that are willing to influence the market through their choices. The outcomes of the study shown that the role of virtual brokers is essential to the further development of a sustainable e-health market globally because its role as catalyst for interaction between the two-sides of the markets, its effects on the reduction of competitive constrains, its effects on the accessibility to broader network of actors and its effects on the support of public-private exchanges of knowledge and experience.
文摘Investing on value-added service （VAS） amplifies users＇ participation and platform profit. However, the investing resource is usually limited in practice. This paper investigates VAS investing and pricing strategies for a two-sided platform under investing resource constraint. We reveal that with VAS investment, Subsidizing can still be done to enlarge users＇ demand, even when the investing cost becomes higher. For optimal pricing strategies, the network effect will be the dominating determinant if the gap between two marginal cross-side benefits （i.e. the benefit that users obtain when each new user join the other side of the platform） is large. Interestingly, we show that with the increase of the marginal investing cost, users might either be priced higher or lower. If the marginal investing cost increases to a high level, and the gap between the two marginal cross-side benefits is large, lowering the access fee for users possessing the higher eross-side network effect does not necessarily compensate more profit loss caused by higher cost. Moreover, after VAS is developed, raising the access fee for those whose marginal investing benefit is large does not necessarily generate more profit as well. The opposite strategy further enlarges users＇ utility, and promotes the investment to benefit more users.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant NOs.G71520107001,G7187010221 and G11771149.
文摘Nowadays,more and more transactions or interactions like online dating and shopping are completed on two-sided platforms involving two groups of agents.On these two-sided platforms,there often exist cross-network effects,i.e., the benefits that agents at one side receive are positively related to the number of agents at the other side,and vice versa.This paper considers such two-sided platforms,where the platforms offer a certain service to attract agents of both sides to join the platforms,and then charge agents who join the platforms a lump-sum fee to gain the profit.We present service and pricing strategies for both monopolistic and duopolistic platforms,respectively.We also investigate the impact of platforms'life cycle on their service and pricing strategies.Some managerial implications are shown.
基金We thank Dr. W. Wang for fruitful discussions. We acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11222544, the Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation under Grant No. 131008, and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University （NCET-12-0121）.
文摘Phase transitions are being used increasingly to probe the collective behaviors of social human systems. In this study, we propose a different way of investigating such transitions in a human system by establishing a two-sided minority game model. A new type of agents who can actively transfer resources are added to our artificial bipartite resource-allocation market. The degree of deviation from equilibria is characterized by the entropy-like quantity of market complexity. Under different threshold values, Qth, two phases are found by calculating the exponents of the associated power spectra. For large values of Qth, the general motion of strategies for the agents is relatively periodic whereas for low values of Qth, the motion becomes chaotic. The transition occurs abruptly at a critical value of Qty. Our simulation results were also tested based on human experiments. The results of this study suggest that a chaotic-periodic transition related to the quantity of market information should exist in most bipartite markets, thereby allowing better control of such a transi- tion and providing a better understanding of the endogenous emergence of business cycles from the perspective of quantum mechanics.
基金The authors thank the editor(s)and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions,which are very helpful to improve the quality of the paper.Rui Houis the corresponding author.This paper has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.G71571052 and G71520107001and Guangdong Natural Science Foundation under Grant No.2016A030313691and Guangdong Planning Project of Philosophy and Social Science under Grant No.GD19YGL05.
文摘In this paper,we investigate two competing pay-tv platforms or free-to-air media platforms that consist of two groups of agents:viewers and advertisers.The pay-tv platforms can receive revenues from charging viewers pay-per-view prices and advertising,while the free-to-air platforms can only obtain all incomes from advertising.We discuss and compare advertising intensities and program content provisions of the two competing media platforms.Our findings show that if the extent to which viewers dislike advertising(the nuisance for advertising)is more massive than the marginal benefit that advertisers receive from an additional viewer,the pay-tv stations tend to maximally differentiate their program content and charge the viewers higher pay-per-view prices.If the nuisance approaches to the marginal benefit,however,both stations should offer similar program content,and charge the viewers lower prices under certain conditions.Particularly,if both platforms provide duplicated content,they should subsidize the viewers.In contrast,we show that the free-to-air media platforms never duplicate program content with a positive nuisance for advertising,and tend to offer maximal differentiated content if the nuisance is sufficiently large.Moreover,we reveal that if the viewers greatly dislike advertising(care less about advertising),the advertising volume of the pay-tv platforms is lower(higher)than that of the free-to-air platforms.Finally,we extend our base model to the case in which a pay-tv platform competes against a free-to-air station,and numerically show that the profit of the pay-tv platform may be larger or smaller than that of the free-to-air station.
文摘Establishing a two-sided market （specialized market） is an effective way to build a national value chain （NVC）. The Chinese knock-off wireless handset industry has succeeded in building a miniature version of an NVC based on the Huaqiangbei Market, a typical specialized market. ＂Ihis paper begins b）, analyzing the differences in the industrial chains of knock-off and traditional wireless handsets and concludes that due to lacking after-sales service, the value chain of knock-off wireless handsets is consumer-driven, with a focus on manufacturing and marketing. Analysis of the knock-off wireless handset-based NVC reveals that multi-level demands, a maturing industry and adaptive innovation are three pre-conditions for Chinese manufacturing to build an NVC in a two-sided market. Given the uneven scale and techniques among knock-off handset makers, their addiction to the low-end market and imperfect value chains constructed using the ＂knockoff pattern＂ this paper proposes that China can break these bottlenecks by letting the specialized and unilateral markets develop closer to each other and by providing governmental guidance in the specialized market.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61672225)。
文摘The stability of sampled-data systems is investigated using a new type of Lyapunov functional.The interval from the sampling point t_(k) to t_(k+1) is assumed to be a sampling interval.By fully utilizing the characteristic information on the whole sampling interval,a new two-sided closed-loop Lyapunov functional is proposed,which utilizes the information on both the intervals from the sampling point t to k_(t) and from t to t_(k+1).Based on the two-sided closed-loop Lyapunov functional and modified free-matrix-based inequality,a less conservative stability criterion is derived for a sampled-data control system,and three numerical examples are provided to verify the effectiveness and reduced conservativeness of the proposed method.Furthermore,the proposed method is applied to solve the stability problem of electric power markets,and the practical significance of reducing the conservativeness is discussed.
