We study a two-sided market where a platform attracts firms selling differentiated products and buyers interested in those products. In the unique subgame perfect equilibrium of the game, the platform fully internalizes the network externalities present in the market and firms and consumers all...

We present a theoretical framework which allows for the comparison of the effectiveness of tax measures, loans and funding, in supporting industry-oriented research. We estimate for each of the instruments the exact contribution required by a firm to decide on investing in R&D, given the costs...

The econometrics literature proposed several new causal machine learning methods (CML) in the past few years. These methods harness the strength of machine learning methods to flexibly model the relationship between the treatment, outcome and confounders, while providing valid inferential...

This paper explores how a conditional cash transfer program influences students' schooling decisions when program payments stop in the middle of the school career. To that end, I examine Mexico's Progresa, which covered students only until the end of middle school (at age 15) in its early years....

In practice, social and development interventions are often targeted at groups or individuals with the largest expected benefits. In such cases, treatment effects are usually affected by selection on unobservable factors. We show that modeling the process of selective intervention placement...

A new and rapidly growing econometric literature is making advances in the problem of using machine learning (ML) methods for causal inference questions. Yet, the empirical economics literature has not started to fully exploit the strengths of these modern methods. We revisit influential...

Public benefit-cost analysis of market policies often relies on a particular definition of market surplus that adds up consumer and producer surplus and external costs. This paper provides an overview of conceptual strategies to deal with moral considerations and then develops an adjusted market...

This paper distinguishes uncertainty types that differ continuously with respect to the degree to which uncertainty affects the optimal price/price markup or optimal quantity. A monopoly example is used to show that seemingly strong assumptions on functional forms can represent a wide variety of...

"Robot cars" are cars that allow for automated driving. They can drive closer together than human driven "normal cars" and thereby raise road capacity. Obtaining a robot car instead of a normal car can also be expected to lower the userś value of time losses (VOT), because travel time can be...

A monopolist in public transport may oversupply frequency relative to the social optimum, as van Reeven (2008) demonstrates with homogeneous consumers. This result generalizes for heterogeneous consumers who know the timetable. Whether a monopolist oversupplies or undersupplies frequency depends...