Platforms may give preferential treatment to their own products in search results. Whether and how to regulate this self-preferencing behavior is an intensely debated antitrust issue. This paper identifies self-preferencing and quantifies its equilibrium welfare effects in Apple App Store. I...

Empirical search cost estimates tend to increase in the size of the transaction, even if search can be done conveniently online. To assess this pattern systematically, we conduct an online search experiment in which we manipulate the price scale while keeping the physical search effort for each...

We study the effects of limited attention on property prices and energy efficiency (EE) investments in the housing market. Using a novel dataset, we analyse over 5 million residential property sale transactions in England and Wales, each containing information about sale price, property and...

We evaluate the effect of vehicle recalls on vehicle transactions in the second-hand market. Using a rich dataset of Dutch vehicle registrations, we exploit the quasi-experimental variation in recalls across nearly-identical cars. We find strong heterogeneities across market segment: vehicles...

We conduct a field experiment on a movie-recommendation platform to identify if and how recommendations affect consumption. We use within-consumer randomization at the good level and elicit beliefs about unconsumed goods to disentangle exposure from informational effects. We find recommendations...

We study how experts influence consumer behavior and welfare by focusing on the Booker Prize. Leveraging the discontinuity created by the attribution of the prize, we show that readers receive the signal sent by the jury of the Booker and are persuaded to buy the awarded book but experience...

We study a platform's design of membership and transaction fees when sellers compete and buyers cannot observe the prices and features of goods without incurring search costs. The platform alleviates sellers' competition by charging them transaction fees that increase with sales revenue, and...

We study markets for perishable goods with search frictions. Sellers have a single unit of a good and post prices in every period. Buyers engage in costly search to observe prices and match values. In equilibrium trade starts endogenously and the volume of trade increases over time. Under mild...

Researchers are increasingly able to observe consumers’ behavior prior to a purchase, such as their navigation through a store or website and the products they consider. Such pre-purchase (or search) data can be valuable to researchers in a variety of ways: as an additional source of...

This paper studies a model of search engine competition with endogenous obfuscation. Platforms may differ in the quality of their search algorithms. I study the impact of this heterogeneity in consumer surplus, seller profits and platform revenue. I show that the dominant platform will typically...