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作者：Hagiu, Andrei; Teh, Tat-How; Wright, Julian
作者单位：Boston University; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; National University of Singapore
摘要：A growing number of digital platforms operate in a dual mode: running marketplaces for third-party products, while selling their own products on those marketplaces. We build a model to explore the implications of this controversial practice. We analyze the tradeoffs that arise from a regulatory ban on the dual mode, showing how such a ban can harm consumer surplus and welfare even when the platform would otherwise engage in product imitation and self-preferencing. In the empirically most relev...
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作者：Gamp, Tobias; Kraehmer, Daniel
作者单位：Humboldt University of Berlin; University of Bonn
摘要：We study a search market where firms may design products of inferior quality to promote them to naive consumers who misjudge product characteristics. We derive an equilibrium in which superior and inferior quality co-exist and show that as search frictions vanish, the share of superior goods goes to zero. The presence of inferior products harms sophisticated consumers, as it forces them to search longer for superior quality. Policy interventions that reduce search frictions such as the standar...
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作者：Marinovic, Ivan; Szydlowski, Martin
作者单位：Stanford University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities
摘要：We study monitoring in a continuous-time career concerns model. A monitor oversees an agent and generates verifiable evidence if the agent shirks. The monitor's ability is uncertain and requires costly investment to maintain. Unpunished shirking reveals that the monitor is ineffective, which discourages the monitor from maintaining her ability. The agent shirks strategically to discourage the monitor, because shirking increases the rate of learning. Term limits reduce the incentive to shirk an...
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作者：Fan, Ying; Zhang, Ge
作者单位：University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; Amazon.com
摘要：Subsidies to consumers may cause firms to charge higher prices, which offsets consumer benefits from subsidies. We study a subsidy program design that mitigates such price increases by making products' eligibility for a subsidy dependent on firms' commitment to price ceilings. To quantify the importance of such competition for eligibility, we develop a structural model and an estimation procedure that accommodate binding pricing constraints. We find that competition for eligibility mitigates t...
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作者：Bergemann, Dirk; Bonatti, Alessandro; Gan, Tan
作者单位：Yale University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data-whereby a consumer's data are predictive of others' behavior-generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary's cost of acquiring the information. The intermediary optimally preserves the privacy of consumers' identitie...
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作者：Dogan, Mustafa; Hu, Ju
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Peking University
摘要：This article studies an information design problem in a sequential consumer search environment. Consumers, whose valuation of firms' products is uncertain, observe a noisy signal about the valuation upon being matched with a firm. The goal is to characterize those signal structures that maximize consumer surplus. We show that the consumer-optimal signal structure can be found within the class of conditional unit-elastic demand signal distributions. A rich set of properties and comparative stat...
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作者：Tudon, Jose
作者单位：Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico
摘要：This article studies the efficient use of prioritizing certain content over others in Amazon's Twitch.tv, a live streaming service, taking into account the trade-off between entry and congestion. I specify and estimate supply and demand models for live video, and a congestion model. Using technological shocks, I identify congestion costs for content providers and their consumers. Using shocks in prioritization, I identify its benefits. With estimated preferences and technological parameters, I...
