In this paper we estimate a structural model of search for differentiated products, using a unique dataset of individual search histories for hotels online. We propose and implement an identification strategy that allows to separately estimate consumer's beliefs, search costs and preferences....

Technology platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, are the hubs of technology industries. The strategic behavior of a firm controlling a platform affects crucially industry evolution. We develop a framework to characterize the optimal two-sided pricing strategy of a platform firm, that is, the...

How much are we influenced by an author's identity? If identity matters, is it because we have a ``taste for status" or because it offers a useful shortcut --- a signal that is correlated with the likely importance of their ideas? This paper presents evidence from a natural experiment that took...

First, we demonstrate how unregulated price setting in mobile telecommunications may lead to monopolization, even when networks are highly substitutable. Second, we demonstrate that a menu of structural rules, including (i) mandatory interconnection, (ii) reciprocal access prices and (iii) a ban...

We examine the profitability and the welfare implications of price discrimination in two-sided markets. Platforms have information about the preferences of the agents that allows them to price discriminate within each group. The conventional wisdom from one-sided horizontally differentiated...

We study competition among upstream firms when each of them sells a portfolio of distinct products and the downstream has a limited number of slots (or shelf space). In this situation, we study how bundling affects competition for slots. When the downstream has k number of slots, social...

A structural model is used in this paper to analyze the demand and learning behavior in cell phone market. We assume that the cell phone consumption can be divided into a high-value part and a low-value part. The consumers are assumed to be uncertain about the exogenous shock of the need for...

Crowdfunding is a fast emerging internet fundraising mechanism for soliciting capital from the crowd to support entrepreneurial ventures. This paper empirically investigates the dynamics of investors’ backing behaviors in the presence of network externalities and a finite time window. The...

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 RateMDs.com and the Florida Hospital Discharge...

This paper proposes a revealed preference test of network formation models. Specifically, I consider network formation models where agents are (1) strategic, (2) externalities are confined to within an agent’s k-neighborhood, where k can be varied. I show that this model can be tested...