We study how much information firms include in their advertisements and what determines their choices. We use data from advertisement videos from the US OTC analgesics industry between 2001 and 2005 to measure information content in ads. For each video we code the number of cues it contains. The...

We study the relationship between online reviews and advertising spending in the hotel industry. Combining a dataset of TripAdvisor reviews with other datasets describing these hotels’ advertising expenditures, we show, first, that online ratings have a causal demand-side effect on ad...

We study the relationship between online reviews and advertising spending in the hotel industry. Combining a dataset of TripAdvisor reviews with other datasets describing these hotels’ advertising expenditures, we show, first, that online ratings have a causal demand-side effect on ad...

This is a discussion of the manuscript "Local News Online: Aggregators, Geo-Targeting and the Market for Local News" by L. George and C. Hogendorn, presented at the 11th Workshop on Media Economics, which was held at the Recanati Business School, Tel-Aviv University, October 9-10, 2013.

There is widespread evidence that some firms use false advertising to overstate the value of their products. Using a model in which a policymaker is able to punish such false claims, we characterize a natural equilibrium in which false advertising actively influences rational buyers. We analyze...

The paper discusses situations in which consumers search through their options in a deliberate order, in contrast to more familiar models with random search. Topics include: network effects (consumers may be better off following the same search order as other consumers); the use of price and...

There is widespread evidence that some firms use false advertising to overstate the value of their products. We consider a model in which a policymaker is able to punish such false claims. We characterize an equilibrium where false advertising actively influences rational buyers, and analyze the...

We investigate the marketing practice of framing a price as a discount from an earlier price. We discuss two reasons why a discounted price---rather than a merely low price---can make a rational consumer more willing to purchase. First, a high initial price can indicate the seller has chosen to...

We study a market model in which competing firms use costly marketing devices to influence the set of alternatives which consumers perceive as relevant. Consumers in our model are boundedly rational in the sense that they have an imperfect perception of what is relevant to their decision...

This paper develops a model of pricing and advertising in a matching environment with capacity constrained sellers and uncoordinated buyers. Sellers' search intensity attracts buyers only probabilistically through costly informative advertisement. Equilibrium prices and profit maximizing...