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Title: Sloppy and out of date research
Review: What a disappointment. Shapiro and Varian use examples about things like network externalities that have been throughly debunked. For example, their claim that dvorak keyboard being superior to the qwerty keyboard is based upon a study done the department of the Navy when Dvorak headed the study! When this study was first referenced this wasn't understood, but at least since 1990 researchers in the area have known this. Unfortunately, a lot of this book is a decade or more behind the times.Their discussions on price discrimination do the lay reader a disservice because they ignore that many (or most) of the differences in price are actually cost based and have nothing to do with monopoly power. Some of these firms that follow their belief that significant monopoly power is everywhere will be in for a very rude awakening. The story is a lot more complicated than Shapiro and Varian let on.
