Gary Biglaiser
Professor
Department: Economics Department
Colleges / Universities: University of North Carolina
Contact
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3305
Email: gbiglais@email.unc.edu
Website: UNC faculty profile
Gary Biglaiser is a Professor with the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. He has wide-ranging research interests in applied microeconomic theory with a concentration on industrial organization and regulation. His most recent research is focused on durable goods monopoly (with James Anton), Moonlighting (with Albert Ma) and dynamic oligopoly (with Nikos Vettas).
Professor Biglaiser is on the editorial boards of the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Regulatory Economics and the Berkeley Electronic Journals in Economics Analysis and Policy. Professor Biglaiser’s recent publications include papers in the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of Regulatory Economics.
Degrees
Ph.D. Economics University of California, San Diego, 1988
M.S. Economics University of California, San Diego, 1985
B.S. Economics University of Arizona, 1982
Recent Academic Article Summaries
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Migrating Away from an Incumbent Platform
Incumbents enjoy competitive advantages over new entrants, because users hesitate to abandon a widely-used platform for one with few users. A new model explores factors that increase and reduce incumbency advantage.
Policymakers should examine practices that deter multi-homing.
The Value of Incumbency When Platforms Face Heterogeneous Customers
Policymakers are unsure how much competition between platforms like Microsoft or Apple is possible or desirable. Consumers are reluctant to switch platforms, giving incumbent firms an advantage.
Competition between platforms benefits consumers. Incumbents may earn less profits than predicted.
Incumbent digital platforms may enjoy advantages over new entrants. Factors affecting the extent of the incumbent’s advantage include consumer coordination problems and consumers’ ability to join more than one platform.
Regulators can reduce some incumbent advantages by requiring access to data.
Compatibility, Interoperability, and Market Power in Upgrade Markets
This paper explains how innovation in software markets tends to limit price increases by leading firms.
Firms that release regular upgrades of their products can gain limited market power, because buyers can choose to stay with the older version instead of buying the new one.
This paper asks how consumers’ costs and choices affect competition.
Competition means that consumers switch between products. Economists have argued that competition will suffer if consumers find it hard to switch. However, the strategic consequences of switching costs are much more complex than the literature assumes when one take into account both the dynamic of the markets and the fact that different consumers have different switching costs.
Blog Posts
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