The dramatic increase of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs created intensive debates on its effects on patient and doctor behaviors. Combining 1994-2000 DTCA data with the 1995-2000 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys, we examine the effect of DTCA on doctor...

This paper studies peer-to-peer (p2p) lending on the Internet.Prosper.com, the first p2p lending website in the US, matches individuallenders and borrowers for unsecured consumer loans. Using transactiondata from June 1, 2006 to July 31, 2008, we examine what informationproblems exist on Prosper...

We examine the role of repetition in government regulation. Using Florida restaurant inspection data from 2003 to 2010, we find that inspectors new to the inspected restaurant report 12.7-17.5% more violations than the second visit of a repeat inspector. This effect is even more pronounced if...

A central prediction of information economics is that market forces can lead businesses to voluntarily provide information about the quality of their products, yet little voluntary disclosure is observed in the field. In this paper, we demonstrate that the inconsistency between theory and...