Thursday, October 15, 2015

Pricing the Internet

More or less by accident I ran across http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/smart.pricing.pdf
an analysis of prospects for internet pricing by Andrew Odlyzko, an old Bell Labs hand now
at the U. of Minnesota.  He makes the case against congestion pricing, arguing that consumers
and perhaps business as well prefer simple flat rates, i.e. usage independent pricing and that
technology is capable of expanding to meet this preference.  Having argued the other side
of this case in http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/1/8.full.pdf  long ago, I was a bit
surprised,  and am still not entirely persuaded.  Maybe this only reflects that I haven't fully
accepted recent developments in behavioral economics?