期刊名称:Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
印刷版ISSN:1460-7425
出版年度:2008
卷号:11
期号:4
页码:1-21
出版社:University of Surrey, Department of Sociology
摘要:Based on a duopolistic set-up where firms produce software products with respective support packs, we analyze firms' predetermined monitoring and their pricing decisions, as well as the impacts of these factors on welfare. Under presence of end-user piracy, users are classified as support-dependent and support-independent. First, a theoretical model is derived, but, due to its complexity, a numerical example is employed to derive the results. We observe that firms that are in competition face a menu of monitoring and pricing combinations. Our results indicate that (i) firms may use monitoring and pricing as strategic complements, rather than substitutes, (ii) profits are not necessarily an increasing function of both monitoring rates and prices, and welfare improvement from the lowest set of monitoring and pricing levels is possible, (iii) firms may prefer improvement in software rather than support packs, targeting especially the support-independent users.