Winners, Losers & Microsoft Competition and Antitrust in High Technology

by Liebowitz, Stan J.; Margolis, Stephen E.; Hirshleifer, Jack

• ISBN13: 9780945999843
• ISBN10: 0945999844
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Independent Institute

Summary

Few issues in high technology are as divisive as the current debate over competition, innovation, and antitrust. Analyzing famous examples of economic "lock-in" by dominant corporations of supposedly inferior products, this book makes the case that free markets in high technology industry deliver better products to consumers, at lower prices, without government intervention. This publication's careful scholarship, well-founded hypotheses, and refutations of previously accepted theoriesextending far beyond the Microsoft casemake this publication a vital piece of understanding for the future of technology and economics.

Author Biography

Stan J. Liebowitz is a professor of managerial economics and the academic associate dean in the school of management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has written on the topics of copyright and technology, broadcasting regulation, pricing practices, and mortgage discrimination. Stephen E. Margolis is a professor of economics and the head of the economics department in the college of management at North Carolina State University. His research includes work on housing markets, pricing of medical services, monopolistic competition, and economic efficiency in the law. They have jointly written numerous scholarly articles on the subjects of network effects and lock-in that have appeared in the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization; Harvard Journal of Law and Technology; and the Journal of Law and Economics. Their more popular articles have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, Investor’s Business Daily, and the Wall Street Journal.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Jack Hirshleifer
Preface to the Revised Edition	xv
Acknowledgments	xvii
I The Paradigm	1	(46)
Networked World	3	(16)
The Fable of the Keys	19	(28)
II The Theory	47	(70)
Theories of Path Dependence	49	(18)
Network Markets: Pitfalls and Fixes	67	(20)
Networks and Standards	87	(30)
III The Real World	117	(192)
Beta, Macintosh, and Other Fabulous Tales	119	(16)
Using Software Markets to Test These Theories	135	(28)
Major Markets---Spreadsheets and Word Processors	163	(38)
Other Software Markets	201	(34)
The Moral	235	(74)
Appendices
A. Networks, Antitrust Economics, and the Case Against Microsoft	245	(28)
B. The Trial	273	(36)
Bibliography	309	(6)
Index	315	(10)
About the Authors	325