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...

Consumers often lack information about how online services collect, use and protect their data. Therefore, transparency is frequently touted as an essential instrument to support consumers in assessing privacy risks and making more informed decisions. In this context, empirical studies have...

This paper reports the results of experiments designed to test whether individuals interacting on Facebook are more likely to succumb to the conjunction fallacy when they post their answers publicly and are exposed to the answers of others. Using the experimental design in Kahneman and Tversky...

In this paper a network model is developed in which three players sequentially choose their strategies. In the first stage, a profit–maximizing network firm chooses the price and thus the size of the network. In the second stage the consumers decide whether to join in the network or not. In...

An increasingly popular trend in online businesses is the adoption of the freemium model, in which premium features are provided along with free features. By providing free features to a large fraction of users and by managing the social interactions between users and their friends, online...

This report presents empirical evidence about the obstacles that European consumers face when trying to buy online goods and services in other EU Member States. It relies on data from a consumer survey carried out in February-March 2015 in the EU28. By comparing named websites with respondents'...

This article is investigating the Romanian consumer behavior in the context of the evolution of the online shopping. Given that online stores are a profitable business model in the area of electronic commerce and because the relationship between consumer digital Romania and its decision to...

We study recent technological innovation in credit markets and document their role in providing information to households. We show that households value the ability to learn detailed information about their cost of credit. This function is most valued by less creditworthy households with less...

We study peer influence in an online social network on a platform where consumers purchase music albums. They can follow their peers and become informed about their consumption choices. In particular, we are interested in how this affects consumers’ exploration of new music that exhibits...

As much as forty percent of social media users have been harassed online, but there is scarce causal evidence of how toxic content impacts user engagement and whether it is contagious. In a pre-registered field experiment, we recruited participants to install a browser extension, and randomly...