Do some search engines produce better search results because their algorithm is better, or because they have access to more data from past searches? In the latter case, mandatory data sharing, a policy that is currently discussed, could trigger innovation and would benefit all users of search...

Social media have become a main source of information for many voters. Political interest groups on social media platforms have the ability to (i) microtarget news based on individual-level voter data and (ii) obfuscate their identities, which can be exploited to spread disinformation. Two...

I study the capacity of business associations - private, formal, noncommercial organizations designed to promote the common business interests of their members - to support contract enforcement and collective action. Inspired by recent empirical literature, my theoretical framework connects the...

There are no generally accepted results regarding the objectives, decisions, and economic outcomes of nonprofit organizations, as compared to forprodit or public firms. We posit that this inconclusiveness is due to a too broad definition of nonprofits and that different types of nonprofits...

This paper studies competition in data-driven markets, that is, markets where the cost of quality production is decreasing in the amount of machine-generated data about user preferences or characteristics, which is an inseparable byproduct of using services offered in such markets. This gives...

Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) are collectively self-governed industry associations, formed by innovators and implementers. They are the main organizational form to agree on and manage technical standards, which have significant positive welfare effects. SSO self-governance avoids...

Recent progress in information technologies provides sellers with detailed knowledge about consumers' preferences, approaching perfect price discrimination in the limit.We construct a model where consumers with less strategic sophistication than the seller's pricing algorithm face a trade-off...

To which extent can data science methods – such as machine learning, text analysis, or sentiment analysis – push the research frontier in the social sciences? This essay briefly describes the most prominent data science techniques that lend themselves to analyses of institutional and...

This paper applies economic governance theory to the cloud computing industry. We analyze which governance institution may be best suited to solve the problems stemming from asymmetric information about the true level of data protection, security, and accountability offered by cloud service...

We analyze the capacities of communities (or social networks) and courts to secure cooperation among heterogeneous, impersonal transactors. We find that communities and courts are complementary in that they tend to support cooperation for different types of transactions but that the existence of...