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; 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.

这项研究重点是互联网服务提供商（ISP）电视和互联网服务的联合定价。随着Netflix和Hulu等流媒体视频服务的最新增长，ISP可能会激励其价格来影响电视和流视频选项的消费者选择。这些定价选择的重要考虑因素包括：交付电视和互联网内容的成本差异，消费者愿意跨娱乐选择代替娱乐选择的意愿以及ISP和其他公司的受益与不同类型的内容不同。调查人员开发了一种将它们考虑在内的模型。估计的模型可以阐明ISPS的定价决策，并且对于评估电信行业中的反托拉斯问题也很有用。这项研究估计了电视和互联网服务的需求和供应模型。调查人员可以访问有关家庭对电视和互联网订阅和使用情况的高度详细数据，并使用这些数据来估算各种娱乐选项的消费者偏好，包括ISP（例如电视和Internet访问）直接出售的服务以及第三方流媒体服务。在供应方面，这项研究估计了ISP和内容提供商的目标功能，同时考虑了公司之间的潜在复杂关系以及其成本结构的差异，这些关系在内容交付给消费者中的作用而变化。使用估计的模型，研究人员模拟了在几种不同情况下的价格将如何变化（以及如何影响消费者和公司）。例如，引入特定于源的歧视定价（例如，向消费者使用各种流媒体服务的特殊ISP附加费）可能会影响消费者对市场可用的视频选项的需求，并且如果ISP可以以这种方式进行歧视，那么许多价格可能会改变。估计的模型还可以用于研究公司如何整合或引入新的流媒体服务的激励措施，何时公司可以使用先进的价格来减少消费者访问或使用竞争对手的服务。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用该基金会的知识优点和广泛影响来评估NSF的法定任务，并被视为值得的支持。