Combining comprehensive data from the Norwegian media market on newspaper circulation, readership, revenues, factor inputs, and product characteristics with plausibly exogenous variation in the availability and adoption of broadband internet, this paper provides causal evidence on how the...

By regulating how firms collect, store, and use data, privacy laws may change the role of data in production and alter firm demand for information technology inputs. We study how firms respond to privacy laws in the context of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by using seven...

We present the first objective evidence on how COVID-19 lockdowns affected internet browser usage in Africa, using detailed digital trace data on PC-based and mobile-based browsing patterns of 316 Kenyans who had access to a PC, covering the period before and during Kenya's first national...

Blockchain-based smart contracts can potentially replace certain traditional contracts through decentralized enforcement and reduced transaction costs. However, scalability is a key bottleneck hindering their broader application and adoption, often leading to concentrated or exclusive networks....

COVID-19 vaccines are widely available in wealthy countries, yet many people remain unvaccinated. Understanding the effectiveness -- or lack thereof -- of popular vaccination campaign strategies is therefore critical. In this paper, we report results from two studies that tested strategies...

This study examines the impact of access to confidential administrative data on the rate, direction, and policy relevance of economics research. To study this question, we exploit the progressive geographic expansion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (FSRDCs)....

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated a trend in "work-from-home (WFH)," but workers need reliable and fast internet connections (e.g., broadband) to work from home. Yet, as of January 2020, 18 states had legally restricted local governments and cooperatives from building their own broadband...

Drawing insights from the field of innovation economics, we discuss the likely competitive environment shaping generative AI advances. Central to our analysis are the concepts of appropriability--whether firms in the industry are able to control the knowledge generated by their innovations--and...

We provide an in-depth study of short-term rental (STR) regulation in Chicago. While many municipalities choose between outright bans or laissez-faire strategies concerning STR activities, Chicago pioneered a middle-ground ordinance, enabling the market to exist with limitations and...

When a user shares multi-dimensional data about themselves with a firm, the firm learns about the correlations of different dimensions of user data. We incorporate this type of learning into a model of a data market in which a firm acquires data from users with privacy concerns. User data is...