The existing literature on two-sided markets addresses participation externalities, but so far it has neglected pecuniary externalities between competing platforms. In this paper we build a model that incorporates both externalities. In our setup differentiated platforms compete in advertising...

In this paper we compare the profitability of a merger to the profitability of a partial ownership arrangement and find that partial ownership arrangements can be more profitable for the acquiring and acquired firm because they can result in a greater dampening of competition. We also derive...

We study a two-sided markets model of two competing television stations that offer content of differentiated quality to ad-averse consumers and advertising space to firms. As all consumers prefer high over low quality content, competition for viewers is vertical. By contrast, competition for...

Media content is an important privately supplied public good. While it has been shown that contributions to a public good crowd out other contributions in many cases, the issue has not been thoroughly studied for media markets yet. We show that in a standard model of commercial media bias,...

The effects of (private, small-scale) piracy on the pricing behavior of producers of information goods are studied within a unified model of vertical differentiation. Although information goods are assumed to be perfectly horizontally differentiated, demands are interdependent because the...

This paper presents a model of media competition with free entry when media operators are financed both from advertisers and customers. The relation between advertising receipts and sales receipts, which are both complementary and antagonist, is different if media operators impose a price or a...

This article analyzes the impact of a local broadband expansion policy on electoral turnout and party vote share. We exploit a unique policy intervention involving staged broadband infrastructure installation across rural municipalities in the Province of Trento (Italy), thus generating a source...

This paper explores the causal influence of media content on voting behavior. We exploit a natural experiment involving access to West German TV within the German Democratic Republic. Focusing on federal and state election outcomes in the post-reunification decade (i.e., a time at which TV...

By facilitating the flow of information in society, communications technology (CT; e.g., newspapers, radio, television, the internet) can help terrorists to (i) spread their message, (ii) recruit followers, and (iii) coordinate among group members. However, CT also facilitates monitoring and...

This paper explores the dynamics of press freedom around events that threaten or oust the incumbent regime of a country. While democracies on average grant the press more freedom, our theoretical starting point is that democracies and autocracies may have similar incentives to protect the power...