In this paper we make use of a quasi-experiment in the market for illegal downloading to study movie box office revenues. Exogenous variation comes from the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload.com on January 19, 2012. The estimation strategy is based on a quasi...

Sampling poses an interesting problem in markets with experience goods. On the one hand, free samples reveal product quality and help consumers to make informed purchase decisions (promotional eff ect). On the other hand, sampling may induce consumers to substitute purchases with free...