 Online or face-to-face? Competition among MOOC and regular education providersHaipeng Han, Donald Lien, Jaimie W. Lien and Jie Zheng International Review of Economics & Finance, 2022, vol. 80, issue C, 857-881 Abstract: Although the importance of online education has long been anticipated, recent conditions in society have accelerated the necessity and popularity of online education by various institutions. We analyze the competition between online and in-person education in a spatial location and pricing game, in which regular education providers located along the Salop circle are competing with online education providers located at the center of the Salop circle. Our model allows education providers to have as their objective, a combination of profits and social welfare considerations. We derive equilibria in a framework with N universities that vary in terms of the composition of online and offline options. Prices, market shares, and social welfare are analyzed in relation to students’ relative preferences for each mode of education, as well as universities’ degree of social welfare considerations. We also consider two main extensions to the model: asymmetric marginal costs of regular universities and MOOCs, and heterogeneity in universities’ objective functions. Keywords: Online education; MOOC; Universities; Competition; Salop model (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:80:y:2022:i:c:p:857-881 DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2022.02.061 Access Statistics for this article International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier |
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