Industrial Organization Commons^™

Social Media And Entrepreneurship: The Case Of Food Trucks, Scott J. Wallsten, Corwin Rhyan

Scott J. Wallsten

While the use of social media by firms is nearly ubiquitous, there has been little analysis of its effectiveness in helping small businesses succeed in a highly competitive market. To begin studying this question, we created an extensive dataset on over 250 mobile food trucks—a dynamic, somewhat homogenous, and low-entry cost business that is highly dependent on social media for its business model—which operated in the Washington, DC metro area from 2009 to 2013. We explore how their use of social media and Internet services like Twitter, Facebook, and business webpages effect their ability to stay in business. We find …

An Economic Analysis Of The Proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

This paper examines the potential benefits and costs of the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable that antitrust authorities must weigh in deciding whether to approve the deal.

Residential And Business Broadband Prices Part 1: An Empirical Analysis Of Metering And Other Price Determinants, Scott J. Wallsten, James Riso

Scott J. Wallsten

For this project, we assemble a new dataset consisting of more than 25,000 residential and business broadband plans from all OECD countries from 2007–2009. We explore three issues: the relationship between plan components—such as metering—and consumer prices, price changes over time, and how broadband prices vary across countries.

This paper, part 1 of the project, discusses pricing for broadband plans and, specifically, the relationship between plan components and pricing. We find that residential broadband plans with data caps—plans in which consumers pay a base price for a set amount of data—cost less than plans with unlimited data, other things being …