Despite heated debate about the pros and cons of online physician ratings, very little systematic work examines the correlation between physicians’ online ratings and their actual medical performance. Using patients' ratings of physicians at the RateMDs website and the Florida Hospital...

This article evaluates the quality of Internet banking services in France, and shows quality differences that result from underdevelopment of services such as "informational” or “customer relationships management” services. The certification process is then presented as a solution to...

We embed the principal-agent model in a model of spatial differentiation with correlated consumer preferences to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing and quality allocation (PPQ), whereby duopoly firms charge different prices and offer different qualities to different...

We analyze how sellers of used construction equipment sort products between online and offline auctions based on the quality and transparency of different machine attributes. Sellers are more likely to offer machines online if quality is high for attributes whose integrity can be measured via...

In late June 2013, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, announced plans to provide restaurant health inspection data to Yelp.com for publication on their popular online consumer-review forum. These data were already publicly available on the city's website. I utilize this partnership to test...

Asymmetric information can distort market outcomes. I study how the online disclosure of information affects consumers' behavior and firms' incentives to upgrade product quality in markets where information is traditionally limited. I first build a model of consumer search with firms' endogenous...

We study the empirical relationship between hygiene conditions in restaurants and their food quality rated by professional reviewers. Using evidence from the UK, we show that this relationship is negative and statistically significant. So, a higher food quality rating is generally associated...

We show that as nonbanks' market share increases in a local residential mortgage market, the quality of mortgage services in the market improves. Two instrumental variable analyses exploiting (1) stress tests conducted by the Federal Reserve, and (2) mortgage industry surety bonds required by...

This study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on firms' choices of product quality. In 1998, Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to be displayed in restaurant windows. We show that the grade cards cause (i) restaurant health...