Online price comparison agents (shopbots) allow consumers to instantaneously receive price and other information from many online retailers. Online consumer clickstream data from ComScore Inc.demonstrate that consumers are increasingly using shopbots to conduct search. This phenomenon raises...

The Internet has had profound effects on society, both positive and negative. In this paper we examine the effect of the Internet on a negative spillover: hate crime. In order to better understand the link, we study the extent to which broadband availability affects racial hatecrimes in the US...

How did the diffusion of the Internet affect performance and product quality in the airline industry? We argue that the shift to online distribution channels has changed the way airlines compete for customers - from an environment in which airlines compete for space at the top of travel...

As online information availability for products and services is increasing and as buyers engage in more online search prior to purchase decisions, it is becoming more important for firms to know when to invest to reduce buyer uncertainty. This article argues that today's firms should view...

We consider a structural model of demand and supply where firms endogenously offer vertically differentiated products and exercise second-degree price discrimination. We apply this model to the smartphone industry and quantify the welfare effects of price discrimination and competition. We use...

How has the Internet affected newspaper content? We build a dataset that matches newspaper readability measures to Internet penetration at the county-year level from 2000 – 2008. We document a positive relationship between Internet penetration and newspaper readability. This result appears...

We examine how standardization in the information and communication technologies affects the inventive activities of firms that do not contribute standards but potentially produce to the standards. In the context of the Internet Engineering Task Force, we find that as a technological area...

In this paper, we examine how a seller sells a product/service with a positive consumption externality, and customers are uncertain about the product's/service's value. Because early adopters learn this value, we consider the customers' intrinsic signaling incentives and positive feedback...

Signal quality is a significant contributor to the overall quality of wireless telephone service, which competitive analyses often overlooks. To understand the competitive impact of signal quality investment on further consolidation in this industry, I use a market research survey of choice of...