An Empirical Analysis of Internet Service Providers' Pricing of Television and Internet Services

互联网服务提供商电视和互联网服务定价的实证分析

• 批准号: 1824293
• 负责人: Jonathan Williams
• 金额: $ 39.19万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2022-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1824293&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Empirical; Analysis; Internet; Service; Providers

This research focuses on internet service providers' (ISP) joint pricing of television and internet services. With the recent rise of streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu, ISPs may have an incentive to use their prices to influence consumers' choices across TV and streaming video options. Important considerations for these pricing choices include: the cost differences in delivering TV and internet content, the willingness of consumers to substitute across entertainment options, and how ISPs and other firms benefit differently from different sorts of content. The investigators develop a model that take them into account. The estimated model can shed light on ISPs' pricing decisions, and can be also useful for evaluating antitrust issues in the telecommunications industry. This research estimates a model of demand and supply for television and internet services. The investigators have access to highly detailed data on households' choices over TV and internet subscriptions and usage, and use these data to estimate consumers' preferences across a wide variety of entertainment options, including services sold directly by ISPs (e.g. TV and internet access) and by third-party streaming services. On the supply side, this research estimates the objective functions of ISPs and content providers while accounting for potentially complex relationships among firms and differences in their cost structures, which vary with their roles in content delivery to consumers. Using the estimated model, the investigators simulate how prices will change (and how consumers and firms would be affected) under several different scenarios. For example, the introduction of source-specific discriminatory pricing (e.g. special ISP surcharges to consumers for using various streaming services) may affect consumers' demand for the full range of video options available in the market, and many prices are likely to change if ISPs can price discriminate in this way. The estimated model can be also used to study how firms' incentives to integrate or introduce new streaming services vary when firms can use sophisticated prices to curtail consumers' access to or usage of competing firms' services.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

本研究主要研究网路服务供应商对电视与网路服务的联合定价。随着Netflix和Hulu等流媒体视频服务最近的崛起，互联网服务提供商可能会有动机利用它们的价格来影响消费者在电视和流媒体视频选项上的选择。这些定价选择的重要考虑因素包括：提供电视和互联网内容的成本差异，消费者在各种娱乐选项中进行替代的意愿，以及互联网服务提供商和其他公司如何从不同种类的内容中获得不同的好处。调查人员开发了一个将它们考虑在内的模型。估计的模型可以为运营商的定价决策提供参考，也可以用于评估电信行业的反垄断问题。这项研究估计了电视和互联网服务的需求和供应模型。调查人员可以获得有关家庭对电视和互联网订阅和使用的选择的高度详细的数据，并使用这些数据来估计消费者对各种娱乐选择的偏好，包括由互联网服务提供商直接销售的服务(例如电视和互联网接入)和第三方流媒体服务。在供应方面，这项研究估计了互联网服务提供商和内容提供商的目标函数，同时考虑到公司之间潜在的复杂关系和成本结构的差异，这些差异随他们在向消费者提供内容方面的角色而异。使用估计的模型，调查人员模拟了几种不同情况下价格将如何变化(以及消费者和公司将如何受到影响)。例如，引入针对特定来源的歧视性定价(例如，向使用各种流媒体服务的消费者收取特殊的互联网服务提供商附加费)可能会影响消费者对市场上各种视频选择的需求，如果互联网服务提供商能够以这种方式进行价格歧视，许多价格可能会发生变化。该估计模型还可用于研究当公司可以使用复杂的价格来限制消费者获得或使用竞争公司的服务时，公司整合或引入新的流媒体服务的动机如何变化。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。