This paper develops a method to analyze the effects of competition policy in a network industry. Competition has mixed effects on incentives to invest: when a network is split between competitors, each captures only a fraction of potential network effects. However, a firm may invest in...

This paper evaluates whether competition hinders or spurs investment in a network industry. When a network is split between competitors, potential network effects are foregone. However, a firm may invest in components that are not shared, to steal customers from its competitors. I structurally...

This paper attempts to understand demand for local and other nostalgic production in food. In U.S. household scanner data, nostalgically produced foods sell for a large premium. Controlling for income and demographics, experts who work in food production and health are no less likely to purchase...

Many households in developing countries lack formal financial histories, making it difficult for firms to extend credit, and for potential borrowers to receive it. However, many of these households have mobile phones, which generate rich data about behavior. This article shows that behavioral...

It has become common for governments and practitioners to measure mobility using data from smartphones, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet in countries where few people have smartphones, or use mobile internet, the movement of smartphones may not be a good indicator of the movement of...

A central task in microeconomics is to predict choices in as-yet-unobserved situations (e.g., after some policy intervention). Standard approaches can prove problematic when sufficiently similar changes have not been observed or do not have observable exogenous causes. We explore an alternative...

This paper explores methods for inferring the causal effects of treatments on choices by combining data on real choices with hypothetical evaluations. We propose a class of estimators, identify conditions under which they yield consistent estimates, and derive their asymptotic distributions. The...