Der Beitrag kommentiert den Stand der Literatur zu den Auswirkungen der Medienberichterstattung auf politische Meinungen und Wahlverhalten. Er geht dabei insbesondere auf den theoretischen Hintergrund, die Rolle der Wettbewerbs- und Regulierungspolitik sowie die Besonderheiten des digitalen...

In Deutschland werden in den nächsten Jahren die Stromzähler von Millionen von Stromletztverbrauchern und Betreibern dezentraler Energieerzeugungsanlagen durch vernetzte intelligente Messsysteme, die auch als Smart Meter bekannt sind, ersetzt. Vor dem Hintergrund des gesetzlichen Rahmens und...

The Internet has radically transformed the way we live our lives. The net changes in consumer surplus and economic activity, however, are difficult to measure because some online activities, such as obtaining news, are new ways of doing old activities while new activities, like social media,...

This paper investigates how the destabilizing of a social network may increase the scope of network externalities, using data on sales of a video-calling system made to an investment bank's employees and subsequent usage by these customers. The terrorist attacks of 2001 led potential customers...

We study the relationship between the spread of social media platforms and the communication and responsiveness of politicians towards voters, in the context of the expansion of Facebook in Brazil. We use self-collected data on the universe of Facebook activities by federal legislators and the...

Economic experiments yield lessons to firms that can be acquired only through market experience. Economic experiments cannot take place in a laboratory; scientists, engineers, or marketing executives cannot distill equivalent lessons from simply building a prototype or interviewing potential...

Payment card associations offer both debit and credit cards and, until recently, engaged in a tie-in on the merchant side through the so-called honour-all-cards (HAC) rule. The HAC rule came under attack on the grounds that the credit and debit card markets are separate markets and that the...

We analyze a simple, feasible improvement to the current email system using an uncensored (open) communication channel. Such a channel could be an email folder or account, to which properly tagged commercial solicitations are routed without filtering along the way. We characterize the...