Perceptions of Anglo-American dominance in movie and music trade motivate restrictions on cultural trade. Yet, the market for another cultural good, food at restaurants, is roughly ten times larger than the markets for music and film. Using TripAdvisor data on restaurant cuisines, along with...

Regulators around the world are discussing, or taking action to limit, self-preferencing by large platforms. This paper explores Amazon's search rankings of its own products as the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) was coming into effect. Using data on over 8 million Amazon search...

Women have traditionally participated in intellectual property creation at depressed rates relative to men. Book authorship is now an exception. In 1970, women published a third as many books as men. By 2020, women produced the majority of books. Adding new products can have significant welfare...

Differentiated product consumption choices made without full information can lead to welfare losses from regret and missed opportunities, but a lack of post-purchase usage data has prevented their exploration. Using novel data on individual ownership and post-purchase usage of video games, we...

Libraries have traditionally provided free communal access to books, facilitated by the first sale doctrine's (FSD) guarantee that libraries may purchase physical books at consumer prices. Increasingly restrictive ebook access terms may imperil libraries, and we compare the welfare cost of...

Digitization has led to product proliferation, straining traditional institutions for product discovery; but digitization has also spawned crowd-based rating systems. We compare the relative impacts of professional critics and crowd-based Amazon star ratings on consumer welfare in book...

Platforms are growing increasingly powerful, raising questions about whether their power might be exercised with bias. While bias is inherently difficult to measure, we identify a context within the music industry that is amenable to bias testing. Our approach requires ex ante platform...

Real interest rates rose to historically high levels in 1980 and remained high throughout the decade. Macroeconomists attribute this phenomenon to a combination of tight monetary policy, fiscal deficits, and variable inflation rates. This paper presents preliminary evidence for an additional...

Digitization has facilitated the emergence of large distribution platforms downstream from traditionally powerful suppliers. Digital platforms can carry many suppliers' products, test the products' consumer appeal, and choose which products to promote, potentially shifting power from the...

The arrival of creative machines--software capable of producing human-like creative content--has triggered a series of legal challenges about intellectual property. The outcome of these legal challenges will shape the future of the creative industry in ways that could enhance or jeopardize...