We study whether Amazon engages in self-preferencing on its marketplace by favoring its own brands (e.g., Amazon Basics) in search. To address this question, we collect new micro-level consumer search data using a custom browser extension installed by a panel of study participants. Using this...

This paper studies how market competition influences the algorithmic design choices of firms in the context of targeting. Firms face the general trade-off between bias and variance when choosing the design of a supervised learning algorithm in terms of model complexity or the number of...

We document the effects of a comprehensive set of US retail mergers. On average, prices increase by 1.5% and quantities decrease by 2.3%, with significant heterogeneity in outcomes across mergers. Price changes correlate with the screens codified in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Through a...

This paper presents a new method for estimating discrete games based on bounds of conditional choice probabilities. The method does not require solving the game and is scalable to models with many firms and many discrete decisions. We apply the method to study merger effects on firm entry and...

Industries with significant scale economies or learning-by-doing may come to be dominated by a single firm. Economists have studied how likely this is to happen, and whether it is efficient, using models where buyers are price or quantity takers, even though these industries are often also...

We present a model where social media platforms offer plans that intermix entertaining content with digital advertising ("ads"). Users derive utility from entertainment and learn about their valuation for a product from ads. While some users are fully rational, others naïvely perceive digital...

Consumer choices are increasingly mediated by algorithms, which use data on those past choices to infer consumer preferences and then curate future choice sets. Behavioral economics suggests one reason these algorithms so often fail: choices can systematically deviate from preferences. For...

In agreements settling patent challenges in the drug industry, the plaintiff brand commonly licenses the defendant generic to sell prior to patent expiry. Some agreements require the generic to pay the brand royalties. Despite the superficial flow of profits, royalty terms may function as part...

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...

Concerns over the excessive use of mobile phones, especially among youths and young adults, are growing. We present, to our knowledge, the first estimates of both behavioral spillover and contextual peer effects, as well as the first comprehensive evidence of how own and peers' mobile app usage...