Microsoft's Pricing of Windows: A Reply to Reddy, Evans, Nichols, and Schmalensee
Despite arguments to the contrary, PCheterogeneity may go a long way towardexplaining why the price ofWindows might be as low as it is.
Can we measure Microsoft's market power ?
This paper has the objective of measuring the market power of Microsoft in the software industry. We develop a two tier arguent. Firstly we estimate the scale economies within the industry. We then make the crude hypothesis that a firm's success in this industry is linked to its size, based on the scale argument. We modelise these assumptions and then compare the expected profits and actual profits genereted by Microsoft. The results tend to show that Microsoft has posted profits in excess of those that such a firm is expected to benefit from if it does not have market power.
Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?
By a potential person I shall mean an entity which is not now a person but which is capable of developing into a person, given certain biologically and/or technologically possible conditions. This is admittedly a narrower sense than some would attach to the term ‘potential'. After all, people of the twenty-fifth century, if such there will be, are in some sense potential people now, even though the specific biological entities from which they will develop, i.e. the particular gametes or concepti, do not yet exist. For there do exist, in the reproductive capacities of people now living and in the earth's resources, conditions adequate to produce these future people eventually, provided of course that various possible catastrophes are avoided. Indeed, in some sense of ‘potential’ there have been countless billions of potential people from the beginning of time. But I am concerned not with such remote potentialities but with currently existing entities that are capable of developing into people.