Online sources sometimes publish information that is false or intentionally misleading. We study the role of social networks and advertising on social networks in the dissemination of false news stories about childhood vaccines. We document that anti-vaccine Facebook groups disseminate false...

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...

Third-party cookies and related 'offsite' tracking technologies are frequently used to share user data across applications in support of ad delivery. These data are viewed as highly valuable for online advertisers, but their usage faces increasing headwinds. In this paper, we quantify the...

We provide evidence that the online discussion on the WSB subreddit had a substantial negative impact on the profitability of shorting strategies across a number of stocks -- even those that were neither heavily discussed on the subreddit, nor experienced an unusual increase in retail buying...

Younger men, ages 21 to 30, exhibited a larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women. Since 2004, time-use data show that younger men distinctly shifted their leisure to video gaming and other recreational computer activities. We propose a framework to answer...

Economic research on entertainment is scant despite its large share of time use. We test economic theories of belief-based utility in the context of video-game engagement. Using data on 2.8 million matches from League of Legends, we find evidence supporting reference-dependent preferences, loss...

We investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the time people devote to video/computer gaming. Average American teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming, while for adults this figure is 2.7%. Using the American Add Health Study, we show that adults who are...

We model social media as collections of users producing and consuming content. Users value consuming content, but doing so uses up their scarce attention, and hence they prefer content produced by more able users. Users also value receiving attention, creating the incentive to attract an...

We measure the individual and collective viewpoints of US Congress members on various economic policies by scraping their Twitter accounts. Tweets that criticize (support) a particular company are associated with a significant negative (positive) stock price reaction in a narrow time window...

Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a randomized experiment. Temporary incentives to reduce social media use have persistent effects, suggesting social media are...