We analyze the capacities of communities (or social networks) and courts to secure cooperation among heterogeneous, impersonal transactors. We find that communities and courts are complementary in that they tend to support cooperation for different types of transactions but that the existence of...

Do some search engines produce better search results because their algorithm is better, or because they have access to more data from past searches? In the latter case, mandatory data sharing, a policy that is currently discussed, could trigger innovation and would benefit all users of search...

Social media have become a main source of information for many voters. Political interest groups on social media platforms have the ability to (i) microtarget news based on individual-level voter data and (ii) obfuscate their identities, which can be exploited to spread disinformation. Two...

Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) are collectively self-governed industry associations, formed by innovators and implementers. They are the main organizational form to agree on and manage technical standards, which have significant positive welfare effects. SSO self-governance avoids...

Recent progress in information technologies provides sellers with detailed knowledge about consumers' preferences, approaching perfect price discrimination in the limit.We construct a model where consumers with less strategic sophistication than the seller's pricing algorithm face a trade-off...

In this paper we aim to understand how bounded rationality a ffects performance of democratic institutions. We consider policy choice in a representative democracy when voters do not fully anticipate a politician's strategic behavior to manipulate his reelection chances. We find that this...

The market for Internet search is not only economically and socially important, it is also highly concentrated. Is this a problem? We study the question whether "competition is only a free click away". We argue that the market for Internet search is characterized by indirect network...

We examine the interrelation between interconnection and competition in the Internet backbone market. Networks that are asymmetric in size choose among different interconnection regimes and compete for end-users. We show that a direct interconnection regime, peering, softens competition as...