This paper empirically examines the role of social networks in welfare participation. Social theorists from across the political spectrum have argued that network effects have given rise to a culture of poverty. Empirical work, however, has found it difficult to distinguish the effect of...

This paper investigates how the tying of complementary products can be used to preserve and extend monopoly positions. We first show how a firm that is a monopolist of a product in the current period can use tying to preserve its monopoly position in future periods. We then show using related...

Many economic activities are embedded in networks: sets of agents and the (often) rivalrous relationships connecting them to one another. Input sourcing by firms, interbank lending, scientific research, and job search are four examples, among many, of networked economic activities. Motivated by...

Using staggered entry of two dockless bikesharing firms, we find the entrant expands the market for the incumbent. The entry helps the incumbent to serve a greater number of trips, make more bike investment, achieve higher revenue per trip, improve bike utilization rate, and form a wider and...

This paper uses a dataset from Tanzania with information on consumption, income and income shocks within and across family networks. Crucially and uniquely, it also contains data on the degree of information existing between each pair of households within family networks gCrucially and uniquely,...

We study an economy in which consumers and merchants (sellers) interact on a two-sided platform. Consumers can share data about their tastes for different varieties of a single good with the platform which in turn sells this data to merchants. Data sharing increases gains from trade by improving...

Two-sided platforms (2SPs) cater to two or more distinct groups of customers, facilitating value-creating interactions between them. The village market and the village matchmaker were 2SPs; eBay and Match.com are more recent examples. Other examples include payment card systems, magazines,...

We seek to analyze the extent and sources of network externalities for the automated clearinghouse (ACH) electronic payments system using a quarterly panel data set on individual bank adoption and usage of ACH. We provide three methods to identify network externalities using this panel data. The...

We estimate the demand for a videocalling technology in the presence of both network effects and heterogeneity. Using a unique dataset from a large multinational firm, we pose and estimate a fully dynamic model of technology adoption. We propose a novel identification strategy based on...

We develop a model of a two-sided asset market in which trades are intermediated by dealers and are bilateral. Dealers compete to attract order flow by posting the terms at which they execute trades-- which can include prices, quantities, and execution speed--and investors direct their orders...