In many industries, Internet referral services, hosted either by independent third-party infomediaries or by manufacturers, serve as digitally enabled lead-generators in electronic markets, directing consumer traffic to downstream retailers in a distribution network. This reshapes the extended...

The Internet search engine market has seen a proliferation of entrants over the last few years. While Yahoo! was the early market leader, there has been entry by both lower quality engines and higher quality ones (such as Google). Prior work on quality differentiation requires that low quality...

We develop a model of vertical differentiation in the Internet search engine market. A key property of the model is that users who try out one engine may be dissatisfied with the results, and consult another engine in the same session. This residual demand allows lower quality engines to survive...

We investigate consumers' choice behavior for Internet search engines. Within this broad agenda, we focus on two interrelated issues. First, we will document whether consumers develop loyalty to a particular search engine. If loyalty does indeed develop, we seek to understand what is the...

We present a framework for measuring software quality using pricing anddemand data, and empirical estimates that quantify the extent of qualitydegradation associated with software ver- sioning. Using a 7-month,108-product panel of software sales from Amazon.com, we document theextent to which...

The Internet has had profound effects on society, both positive and negative. In this paper we examine the effect of the Internet on a negative spillover: hate crime. In order to better understand the link, we study the extent to which broadband availability affects racial hatecrimes in the US...

We review research on revenue models used by online firms who offer digital goods. Such goods are non-rival, have near zero marginal cost of production and distribution, low marginal cost of consumer search, and low transaction costs. Additionally, firms can easily observe and measure consumer...