Do pharmaceutical firms respond to the actions of their competitors in R&D, and if so, how much? Answering this question has implications for policies aimed at incentivizing drug development, such as greater exclusivity protections and a faster FDA approval process. Although such policies lead...

Is industry-funded scientific research likely to be biased towards finding positive results? Using publication-level data consisting of abstracts, citation counts, and funding sources, I explore this question across various food groups. I evaluate each article's abstract using crowdsourcing...

Firms sometimes make selective or deceptive claims. Such claims can have negative consequences for consumers, especially if consumers are not fully informed and the claims are hard to verify. This paper aims to measure the decline in demand that a firm making such claims faces when caught. In...

Fake news advertising, advertising that mimics legitimate news articles, can be harmful if it misleads consumers to take actions they otherwise would not have taken (e.g., purchase an inferior product). However, little is known whether fake news ads bring in new customers or are merely viewed by...

How do consumers respond to "From" prices advertised by firms that differ from the actual purchase price to be paid? While a low “From” price is likely to draw consumers in, a high one is likely to be closer to the true price thus reflecting a more accurate estimate. It is not clear how the...