When startup innovation involves a potentially disruptive technology - initially lagging in the predominant performance metric, but with a potentially favorable trajectory of improvement - incumbents may be wary of engaging in cooperative commercialization with the startup. While the prevailing...

This short note constructs Mobility Zones to facilitate the discussion on the geographic extent of individual mobility restrictions to control the spread of Covid-19. Mobility Zones are disjoint sets of counties where a given level of individual mobility directly or indirectly connects all...

The US mobile phone service industry has dramatically consolidated over the last two decades. One justification for consolidation is that merged firms can provide consumers with larger coverage areas at lower costs. We estimate the willingness to pay for national coverage to evaluate this...

This paper analyzes how better access to financial information via new technology changes use of consumer credit and affects financial fitness. We exploit the introduction of a smartphone application for personal financial management as a source of exogenous variation. FinTech adoption reduces...

This paper develops a dynamic model of technology adoption featuring strategic complementarities: the benefits of usage increase with the number of adopters. We study the diffusion of new means of payments, where such complementarities are pervasive. We show that complementarities give rise to...

Mobile app commissions paid by app developers to a monopolist device maker/app store operator are examined. Three results are demonstrated. First, unregulated app commissions are set at a level that maximises consumer surplus. Second, eliminating app commissions will lead to higher device...

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and of cross-border restrictions on data flows has created a host of new questions and related policy dilemmas. This paper addresses two questions: How is digital service trade shaped by (1) AI algorithms and (2) by the interplay between AI algorithms and...

Artificial Intelligence is a powerful new technology that will likely have large impacts on the size, direction and composition of international trade flows. Yet almost nothing is known empirically about this. One AI-enabled set of services that can be tracked resides in the palm of our hands:...

Using data on 4.1 million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019, we document that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps; and in the quarters following implementation, entry of new apps fell by half. We estimate a structural model of demand and entry in the app...