Using a Markov-perfect equilibrium model, we show that the use of customer data to practice intertemporal price discrimination will improve monopoly profit if and only if information precision is higher than a certain threshold level. This U-shaped relationship lends support to a popular view...

Two duopolists compete in price on the market for a homogeneous product. They can ‘profile’ consumers, i.e., identify their valuations with some probability. If both firms can profile consumers but with different abilities, then they achieve positive expected profits at equilibrium. This...

We investigate the strategies of a data intermediary selling consumer information to firms for price discrimination purpose. We analyze how the mechanism through which the data intermediary sells information influences how much consumer information she will collect and sell to firms, and how...

We consider a duopoly model where firms can identify only a share of consumers, which is positively correlated with the consumer' preferences. Firms charge personalized prices to the consumers they can recognize and a uniform price to the rest of consumers. The firms' available information is...

Digital platforms, empowered by artificial intelligence algorithms, facilitate efficient interactions between consumers and merchants that allow the collection of profiling information which drives innovation and welfare. Private incentives, however, lead to information asymmetries resulting in...

International comparisons show that the reasons why e-government development in Germany does not occupy the desired "top spot" in rankings lie primarily in the inadequate provision of online services with little corresponding user orientation. In order to provide better and faster public...

The recent deployment of fibre-optic submarine cables (SMCs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) raised the prospects for the digital economy expansion and the whole sub-continent take-off, but also exposed countries and populations to new sources of vulnerability. This paper provides empirical evidence...

We study substitution between fixed and mobile broadband services in South Africa using survey data on 134,000 individuals between 2009 and 2014. In our discrete-choice model, individuals choose fixed or mobile voice and data services in a framework that allows them to be substitutes or...

We ask whether epidemic exposure leads to a shift in financial technology usage within and across countries and if so who participates in this shift. We exploit a dataset combining Gallup World Polls and Global Findex surveys for some 250,000 individuals in 140 countries, merging them with...