Studies on the United States home video cassette recorder market in 1978--1987.

摘要

This dissertation studies the home video cassette recorder (VCR) market in the U.S from 1978 to 1987. VCRs have been one of the most famous examples of network externalities in industrial organization, however, there have been few empirical studies on this market. The dissertation provides new findings for a wide range of current economic literature, including price measurement, international trade, and industrial organization. The thesis conducts three independent studies. It first calculates the quality-adjusted price indexes of VCRs, and computes the bias in the BLS CPI introduced by not having priced VCRs until 1987. Secondly the thesis examines the impact on the U.S. VCR market of the EC-Japan voluntary export restraints (VERs), a topic which has not been investigated in the previous literature. A random utility discrete choice model is used for VCR demand estimation. Lastly the thesis studies the role of network externality effects in the format competition between VHS and Beta, and analyzes how important the pricing strategies would be in the U.S. VCR market. It also tries to measure the value of network externalities for VCRs and assess the effect of firms' compatibility decisions.