Essays on Network Economies

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on Network Economies. The first chapter considers a patent licensing game under a Bertrand duopoly. The present discussion is based on the patent holder as a inside competitor and the diversity of consumers faithfulness. A patent of an innovative cost-saving technology brings a price difference in duopoly market. However, consumers faithfulness for a particular firm sustains the competitive environment still. Tin this setup, we discuss about the patent holders policy: a fixed fee and a royalty licensing. And we evaluate the results in the perspective of consumers. The second chapter is talking about the value allocation among multi cooperators. Due to rapid growth of network services and emerging markets using it, the problem how to share the revenue from joint provisions becomes a very critical issue between cooperators. The study introduces a network operator and contents provider to settle down the revenue sharing fraction. We construct a study beginning with a simplified contract between a network service operator and a contents provider using the network as a platform for selling the contents. We explored the application of the Shapley value as an illustrative solution for this revenue sharing problem. First the present approach applying the Shapley Value is based on a basic concept that the share for a player in a game is determined only by its marginal contribution to establish coalition of others. The result allocating the value among 2 agents and multiple agents according to this basic so that the market power or superior position in cooperation does not effect on the final allocation. Also the solution proposed here does consider the quality represented by the sales of each products, the network service are the contents. Moreover the contract based on this approach is consistent in bilateral or multiple agents case. The last study on the maritime network aims to describe the world wide transportation system in the maritime sector as providing important measures of the network analysis. Based on the dataset of container shipping lines, we investigate helpful indicators to show how ports are connecting to each other in both global and regional views and what implications we can have here. Adversely to the general acceptance about the configuration of line and circle connections, the results present strong evidences that modern and emerging linkages have multi-hub structures. The degree distribution shows that both worldwide and regional connections are having power-law distribution functions. More concentrated connections to a few ports are observed in the results considering the strength and in spatial regions. Clustering coefficient and betweenness are fit for exploring spatial configuration in global and regional connections. Concentration measures are explored and compared in Gini index approach and Freemans approach to show how nods are connect in the point of view of hub-and spoke configuration. Degree distribution, connectivity indices, concentration measures and various viewpoints in visualized analysis are explored in the main empirical works. Comparisons between worldwide connections and spatial region show that the maritime transportation system has a complex network configuration.