This paper documents the extent of copying and estimates the returns to originality in online news production. We build a unique dataset combining all the online content produced by French news media during the year 2013 with new micro audience data. We develop a topic detection algorithm that...

Newspapers' advertising revenues have declined sharply in recent decades. We build a model to investigate the consequences on newspapers' content and prices of a reduction in advertisers' willingness to pay. Newspapers choose the size of their newsroom, and readers are heterogeneous in the...

Online rating systems can lead, on occasion, to reviews that are unfair or un-representative of the true quality provided. On the one hand, receiving an unfairly low rating once, might induce someone a platform supplier to exert more effort and receive a better rating the next time. On the other...

Many video ads are designed to go 'viral,' so that the total number of views they receive depends on customers sharing the ads with their friends. This paper explores the relationship between number of views and how persuasive the ad is at convincing consumers to purchase or to adopt a favorable...

The increasing availability of individual-level data has raised the standards for measurability and accountability in digital advertising. Using a massive individual-level data set, our paper captures the effectiveness of display advertising across a wide range of consumer behaviors. Two unique...

We explore substitution patterns across advertising platforms. Using data on the advertising prices paid by lawyers for 139 Google search terms in 195 locations, we exploit a natural experiment in “ambulance-chaser” regulations across states. When lawyers cannot contact clients by mail,...

Many scholars argue that content providers, when incentivized by ad revenue, are more likely to tailor their content to attract “eyeballs,” and as a result, popular content may be excessively supplied. We empirically test this prediction by taking advantage of the launch of an...

Consumers buy internet access from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to reach online content providers. Under net neutrality, an ISP is not allowed to discriminate between content providers, even though it might have an incentive to do so. An ISP might want to sell a “fast lane” to content...

We study optimal cartel prices in a two-sided market. We present a simple model showing that prices above the two-sided monopoly price may prevail on one side of a two-sided market as a means to enhance the sustainability of the cartel. We prove that in such a case a higher benefit from the...

How does the development of formal standards for information and communication technologies shape the behavior of firms that may need the technologies to develop new products and services? We argue that standardization lowers the search costs of identifying important intellectual property rights...