Beginning in 1997, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed television advertisements to make major statements about a prescription drug, while referring to detailed drug information on the internet (FDA 1997; 2015). The hope was that consumers would seek additional information online to fully...

We examine how policies for the ownership and control of consumer-generated data affect market outcomes in the online advertising industry. When advertisers have strong property rights over data regarding consumers' active purchase interests, competition between ad exchanges leads to too little...

Standard search models assume that consumers actively decide on the order, identity, and number of products they search. We document that online, a large fraction of searches happen in a more passive manner, with consumers merely reacting to online advertisements that do not allow them to choose...