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Two major drivers have transformed the network economy: mobile connectivity and big data. Digital communication technology has connected markets, allowing instant and continuous access to information for all participants.

What is the economic or business model underlying the digital communication industry? Does this increased connectivity lead to more cooperation or more competition in the network economy? Using ideas drawn from psychology, sociology, politics and economics, Professor Swati Bhatt of Princeton University argues that connectivity and big data stimulate cooperation rather than competition in the network economy.

Professor Bhatt received her Ph.D. from Princeton in 1986, worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1985 to 1990, and taught at the Stern School of Business at New York University from 1990 to 1992 before returning to Princeton’s Economics Department. Her research interests are applied microeconomics, industrial organization and finance. She developed and currently teaches a course called “Economics of the Internet.��