Silvia Rossetto

Internet Portals as Portfolios of Entry Options

We investigate the valuation of platform investment, such as asoftware operating system or anInternet portal WebPage. Platform investment is the creation of aninnovative distribution andproduction infrastructure, which increases access to customers; as aresult it reduces entry costs inrelated products. Relative to conventional producers, firms builtaround platforms enjoy enhancedentry options in uncertain market segments, to be exercised at theoptimal strategic timing. Whenthe platform grants a strong strategic advantage, the innovator firmcan optimally choose the timingof entry when its strategic gain exceeds the value of the waitingoption; in case of weakeradvantage, the platform firm enters just before its competitor would.In a context of increaseduncertainty, the relative value of platform to traditional strategiesincreases; the value of waiting toinvest rises, but the value of platforms increases even more. In somecases, platform can reduceentry by making parallel monopoly sustainable.

Reputational Cheap Talk with Misunderstanding

We consider a cheap talk game with a sender who has a reputational concern for an ability to predict a state of the world correctly, and where receivers may misunderstand the message sent. When communication between the sender and each receiver is private, we identify an equilibrium in which the sender only discloses the least noisy information. Hence, what determines the amount of information revealed is not the absolute noise level of communication, but the extent to which the noise level may vary. The resulting threshold in transmission noise for which information is revealed may differ across receivers, but is unrelated to the quality of the information channel. When information transmission has to be public, a race to the bottom results: the cut-off level for noise of transmitted information now drops to the lowest cut-off level for any receiver in the audience.