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作者：Quan, Thomas W.; Williams, Kevin R.
作者单位：University System of Georgia; University of Georgia; Yale University
摘要：Online retail gives consumers access to an astonishing variety of products. However, the additional value created by this variety depends on the extent to which local retailers already satisfy local demand. To quantify the gains and account for local demand, we use detailed data from an online retailer and propose methodology to address a common issue in such data-sparsity of local sales due to sampling and a significant number of local zeros. Our estimates indicate products face substantial d...
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作者：Biglaiser, Gary; Li, Fei
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：We examine the role of a middleman as an expert in markets. A seller's effort determines the quality of the good. Buyers observe neither the seller's effort nor the good's quality. A middleman, after observing a signal about the good's quality, decides whether to purchase it and then to sell it. We show that the presence of a middleman may either reduce or exacerbate the seller's moral hazard problem. We also consider a model with multiple middlemen. We find that the seller's effort is minimiz...
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作者：Willems, Bert; Zwart, Gijsbert
作者单位：Tilburg University; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; University of Groningen
摘要：We model the regulation of irreversible capacity expansion by a firm with private information about capacity costs, where investments are financed from the firm's cash flows and demand is stochastic. The optimal mechanism is implemented by a revenue tax that increases with the price cap. If the asymmetric information has large support, then the optimal mechanism consists of a laissez-faire regime for low-cost firms. That is, the firm's price cap corresponds to that of an unregulated monopolist...
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作者：de Roos, Nicolas
作者单位：University of Sydney
摘要：We examine the effect of limited product comparability on the viability of collusion. Firms choose messages to influence consumer product comparison. The cartel hinders transparency on the equilibrium path and seeks it for optimal punishment. Five conditions are each sufficient to ensure obfuscation aids collusion: if firms can mix over messages or commit to messages, if messages are informative, or if an individual firm or the cartel can control comparability. We also analyze the impact of me...
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作者：Shiller, Benjamin; Waldfogel, Joel; Ryan, Johnny
作者单位：Brandeis University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Ad blocking software allows Internet users to obtain information without generating ad revenue for site owners, potentially undermining investments in content. We explore the impact of site-level ad blocker usage on website quality, as inferred from traffic. We find that each additional percentage point of site visitors blocking ads reduces its traffic by 0.67% over 35 months. Impacted sites provide less content over time, providing corroboration for the mechanism. Effects on revenue are compo...
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作者：Li, Xing; MacGarvie, Megan; Moser, Petra
作者单位：Peking University; Boston University; New York University
摘要：Copyrights create long-lived intellectual property in goods ranging from science, literature, and music to news, film, and software. The economic effects of copyright, however, are difficult to identify in modern settings. This article exploits an unintended differential increase in copyright length under the UK Copyright Act of 1814in favor of books by dead authorsto examine the effects of longer copyright terms on price. We find that a doubling in copyright length was associated with a subst...
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作者：Kastl, Jakub; Pagnozzi, Marco; Piccolo, Salvatore
作者单位：Princeton University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Naples Federico II; University of Bergamo
摘要：Internal agency conflicts distort firms' choices and reduce social welfare. To limit these distortions, principals dealing with privately informed agents often acquire information from specialized intermediaries, such as auditing and certification companies, that are able to ascertain, and credibly disclose, agents' private information. We study how the structures of both the information provision and the final good markets affect information accuracy. A monopolistic information provider may s...
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作者：Hyytinen, Ari; Lundberg, Sofia; Toivanen, Otto
作者单位：University of Jyvaskyla; Umea University; Aalto University; KU Leuven
摘要：We analyze a regime change from beauty contests to first-price sealed-bid and scoring auctions, using Swedish data on public procurement of cleaning services. In beauty contests, the lowest bid often lost, leaving substantial money on the table. The procurement costs were similar before and after the regime change: (i) Entry strongly decreases the procurement cost but did not change. Entry would have decreased had the municipalities not adjusted the objects of auctions. (ii) Municipalities fav...
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作者：Luo, Yao; Perrigne, Isabelle; Quang Vuong
作者单位：University of Toronto; Rice University; New York University
摘要：Uncertainty about ex post realized values is an inherent component in many auction environments. In this article, we develop a structural framework to analyze auction data subject to ex post uncertainty as a pure risk. We consider a low-price sealed-bid auction model with heterogeneous bidders' preferences and ex post uncertainty. The uncertainty can be common to all bidders or idiosyncratic. We derive the model restrictions and study nonparametric and semiparametric identification of the mode...
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作者：Petrikaite, Vaiva
作者单位：Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE); Barcelona School of Economics
摘要：This article shows that a multiproduct firm has incentives to obfuscate its products by using search costs to induce consumers to search through its products in a particular order. The consumers who draw high valuations of the first product terminate their search earlier than the consumers who draw low valuations. Thus, the firm has incentives to raise the price of the earlier searched product. The optimal search cost for an obfuscated product is such that consumers inspect the product only if...
