Last year, I had to deliver a speech about the economics of Internet to a non-technical audience. To make my presentation (hopefully) more pleasant for this audience, and to seize the opportunity to learn a new application, I decided to use Prezi. The application was rather new at the time (it had been launched in 2009 […]
Tag Archives | switching costs
Will the new Belgian Telecom Act lead to lower prices?
By 31 January 2014 9
Since October 1st 2013, a new ” Telecom ” Act transposes into Belgian law a series of European directives to better protect consumers in the telecommunications market. A key measure of this law is the opportunity that is now given to consumers to switch operators (fixed and mobile telephony, Internet and television) without any penalty after […]
Browser War: The Return
By 10 November 2013 0
This is the fourth post adapted from term papers that my master students submitted in June 2013. This post (originally written by Fanny Avaux, Maxime Georgin, Marie-Laure Le Déodic & Sophie Naert) has been honed and complemented by Olivier Simons. The first browser war took place in the late 1990s when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer replaced Netscape’s […]
What is the future of BlackBerry?
By 20 September 2013 4
This is the second post adapted from term papers that my master students submitted in June 2013. This post (originally written by Loïc Esselen, Zhang Hong, Sebastian Malmport and Vianney Picavet) has been polished and complemented by Olivier Simons. Once Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry, has been market leader in […]
Online banking, switching costs and competition: a complex story
By 18 January 2012 59
(Updated February 7, 2013) In an article published in October 2012 in the New York Times, Nelson D. Schwartz suggests that online banking creates switching costs and, thereby, reduces competition in the US banking sector. The title of the article summarizes the argument in a forceful way: “Online Banking Keeps Customers on Hook for Fees”. Mr. Schwartz illustrates […]