How did the diffusion of the Internet affect performance and product quality in the airline industry? We argue that the shift to online distribution channels has changed the way airlines compete for customers - from an environment in which airlines compete for space at the top of travel...

A cornerstone of the law and economics approach to standard form contracts is the Òinformed minorityÓ hypothesis: in competitive markets, a minority of term-conscious buyers is enough to discipline sellers from offering unfavorable boilerplate terms. The informed minority argument is widely...

A monopolist offers a product to a market of consumers with heterogeneous quality preferences. Although initially uninformed about the product quality, they learn by observing past purchase decisions and reviews of other consumers. Our goal is to analyze the social learning mechanism and its...

This paper empirically analyzes how the use of vertical price restraints has impacted retail prices in the market for e-books. In 2010 five of the six largest publishers simultaneously adopted the agency model of book sales, allowing them to directly set retail prices. This led the Department of...

The YouTube platform reduces fixed entry costs for local artists but also lowers the cost of access to international superstars. The net effect is an empirical question. We study the effect of YouTube on the market for music, focusing on converging tastes for international hits. We consider...

A monopolist offers a product to a market of consumers with heterogeneous quality preferences. Although initially uninformed about the product quality, they learn by observing past purchase decisions and reviews of other consumers. Our goal is to analyze the social learning mechanism and its...

We investigate how the expansion of Craigslist into different states over a 11 year period in the United States affected the incidence of HIV. Using a natural experiment setup, we identify the effects of Craigslist's entry on HIV trends by exploiting the variations across states and time. After...