We examine how placement of geo-targeted local news links on Google News affected local news consumption. Using a sample of news visits by 36,876 US households before and after a Google News design change, we fi nd that aggregation increased the level and share of local news consumed online....

The Economist puts it best: “The details around network neutrality, the principle that internet-service providers (ISPs) must treat all sorts of web traffic equally, can be mind-numbingly abstruse. But they fuel passion, nonetheless.” A primer already exists in Greenstein, Peitz and Valletti...

We review the economics of superstars, originally developed for stars in traditional media, and discuss whether they are applicable for the (allegedly) novel phenomenon of stars in social media (influencer, micro-celebrities). Moreover, we analyse potentially new factors for creating social...

We discuss the effect of pricing strategies by two firms on the total firm revenue, consumer and total welfare using simulation and numerical analysis. We consider pricing decisions for mixed bundling and where each firm offers two closely related products as well as a bundle. Bundling is a key...

We study how producers of cultural goods can strategically increase their promotion budgets to secure the most profitable release dates for their goods. In a game-theoretic setting, where two producers choose their budget before simultaneously setting the release date of their good, we prove...

This paper provides an economic analysis of recent vertical and horizontal mergers in the U.S. industry for audiovisual media content, including the AT&T-Time Warner and the Disney-Fox mergers. Using a theory-driven approach, we examine economic effects of these types of mergers on market...

We investigate a vertically integrated theater's contract and screen allocation decisions in a movie industry characterized by demand uncertainty, price uniformity, and revenue-sharing contracts. Based on a simple theoretical model that describes the decisions of theaters and movie distributors,...

We measure the welfare consequences of endogenous quality choice in imperfectly competitive markets. We introduce the concept of a "quality markup" and measure the relative importance for welfare of market power over price versus market power over quality. For U.S. cable-television markets...

The markets for audiovisual content are subject to dynamic change. Where once “traditional” (free-to-air, cable, satellite) television was dominating, i.e. linear audiovisual media services, markets display nowadays strong growth of different types of video-on-demand (VoD), i.e. nonlinear...

Digital platforms frequently refer their users to competitors. We show that these references induce a business-sharing effect that may relax competition for users, resulting in lower quality of content. More surprisingly, user surplus may also decrease as the quality effect may overwhelm the...