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作者:Hua, Xinyu; Spier, Kathryn E.
作者单位:Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:Should platforms be liable for harms suffered by users? A platform enables interactions between firms and users. Harmful firms impose larger costs on users than safe firms. If firms have deep pockets and are fully liable for harms, platform liability is unnecessary. If firms have limited liability, holding platforms liable for residual harm increases platforms' incentives to raise interaction prices and invest in auditing to deter, detect, and block harmful firms. The social desirability and o...
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作者:Ganglmair, Bernhard; Simcoe, Timothy; Tarantino, Emanuele
作者单位:University of Mannheim; Leibniz Association; Zentrum fur Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW); Boston University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Luiss Guido Carli University
摘要:Using data from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a voluntary organization that develops protocols for managing internet infrastructure, we estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of the decision to continue or abandon a line of research. The model's key parameters measure the speed at which authors learn whether their project will become a technology standard. We use the model to simulate two innovation policies: an R&D subsidy and a publication prize. While subsidies have a larger...
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作者:Newham, Melissa; Seldeslachts, Jo; Banal-Estanol, Albert
作者单位:Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich; KU Leuven; Leibniz Association; DIW Berlin - Deutsches Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung; University of Amsterdam; Barcelona School of Economics; Pompeu Fabra University; City St Georges, University of London
摘要:Common ownership-where several firms are (partially) owned by the same investors-and its impact on product market competition has recently drawn much attention. This paper focuses on its implications for market entry. We consider the entry decisions of generic pharmaceutical firms into drug markets that are opened up by the end of regulatory protection and which were previously dominated by a single firm selling the brand name drug. We find robust evidence that an increase in common ownership ...
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作者:Gentzkow, Matthew; Wong, Michael B.; Zhang, Allen T.
作者单位:Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Hong Kong
摘要:We study the role of endogenous trust in amplifying ideological bias. Agents in our model learn a sequence of states from sources whose accuracy is ex ante uncertain. Agents learn these accuracies by comparing their own reasoning about the states based on introspection or direct experience to the sources' reports. Small biases in this reasoning can cause large ideological differences in the agents' trust in information sources and their beliefs about the states, and may lead agents to become o...
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作者:Wilson, Kyle
作者单位:Pomona College; Claremont Colleges; Pomona College
摘要:Government infrastructure investment may crowd out investment from private firms or induce them to invest preemptively. The tension between these effects underlies the policy debate over municipal provision of internet access. I estimate demand for broadband and combine these results with a dynamic oligopoly model of private and public firms' entry and investment decisions. I simulate a ban on public entry and find that municipalities crowd out more private fiber-optic investment than they ind...
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作者:Corbi, Raphael; Sanches, Fabio Miessi
作者单位:Universidade de Sao Paulo; Getulio Vargas Foundation
摘要:We study the effects of church tax exemptions on the structure of religious markets. Using the Brazilian experience as a showcase, we develop and estimate a dynamic entry model of religious organizations based on temple opening and closure in geographically isolated markets. Counterfactual simulations suggest that tax exemptions stimulated entry by all religions, but disproportionately benefited evangelical denominations: The evangelical share of temples increased by approximately 20 percentag...
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作者:Harris, Adam; Nguyen, Thi mai anh
作者单位:Cornell University; New York University
摘要:This paper provides evidence on the scope and incentive mechanisms of long-term relationships in the US truckload freight industry. In this setting, shippers and carriers engage in repeated interactions under fixed-rate contracts that allow for inefficient opportunism. The main dynamic mechanism involves shippers using the threat of relationship termination to deter carriers from short-term opportunism. This threat and the potential of future rents induce more carrier cooperation. We test this...
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作者:Terstiege, Stefan; Vigier, Adrien
作者单位:Maastricht University; University of Nottingham
摘要:A monopolistic seller possesses an inventory containing distinct products, each consumer wishes to buy a single product, and the seller can steer consumers' choices. We fully characterize the producer-consumer surplus pairs induced by market segmentation when the number of products is large. The same characterization holds if the seller cannot price discriminate. We also investigate the relationship between consumer surplus, social welfare, and consumer privacy. Along the Pareto frontier, poin...
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作者:Chen, Chia-Hui; Chen, Kong-Pin; Ishida, Junichiro
作者单位:Kyoto University; Academia Sinica - Taiwan; University of Osaka
摘要:Rating systems, widely used in online transactions, often reduce buyers' diverse opinions to summary statistics. To explore the consequences of this coarse aggregation, we analyze a dynamic adverse selection model where buyers share anonymous evaluations via a rating system. With heterogeneous buyers, the seller is tempted to secretly lower prices to attract favorable ratings from price-sensitive buyers. That leads to sporadic flash sales. The seller's incentive to manipulate ratings is, howev...
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作者:Reshidi, Pellumb; Thereze, Joao; Zhang, Mu
作者单位:State University System of Florida; Florida State University; Duke University; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要:We study asymptotic learning when the decision-maker faces ambiguity in the precision of her information sources. She aims to estimate a state and evaluates outcomes according to the worst-case scenario. Under prior-by-prior updating, we characterize the set of asymptotic posteriors the decision-maker entertains, which consists of a continuum of degenerate distributions over an interval. Moreover, her asymptotic estimate of the state is generically incorrect. We show that even a small amount o...