Emerging markets are fast growing developing countries that are creating not only a rapidly expanding segment of middle class and rich consumers but also have a sizable segment of poor consumers. This paper presents an interdisciplinary perspective integrating insights from quantitative and...

Pharmaceutical products can be of poor quality either because they contain zero correct active ingredient (referred to as "counterfeit") or because they contain a non-zero but incorrect amount of the right active ingredient (referred to as "substandard"). While both types of poor-quality drugs...

Using staggered entry of two dockless bikesharing firms, we find the entrant expands the market for the incumbent. The entry helps the incumbent to serve a greater number of trips, make more bike investment, achieve higher revenue per trip, improve bike utilization rate, and form a wider and...

The year of 1997 witnessed an important change in direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs. For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permitted brand-specific DTC ads on TV without a "brief summary" of comprehensive risk information. This led to a three-fold...

This study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on firms' choices of product quality. In 1998, Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to be displayed in restaurant windows. We show that the grade cards cause (i) restaurant health...

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

Teamwork pervades modern economies, yet teamwork can make individual roles difficult to ascertain. In the sciences, the canonical "Matthew Effect" suggests that eminent team members garner credit for great works at the expense of less eminent team members. We study this phenomenon in reverse,...

We examine the effect of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of drug treatment on an important health habit, physical exercise. By learning the existence of a new drug treatment via DTCA, rational consumers may become careless about maintaining healthy lifestyles. Using the National Health...