Theory predicts that in markets with increasing returns, the number of differentiated products, and the tendency to consume, will grow in market size. I document this phenomenon across 247 U.S. radio markets. By a mechanism that I term "preference externalities," an increase in the size of the...

We analyze the behavior of game-show contestants who play a one-shot game called Friend or Foe. While it is a weakly dominant strategy not to cooperate, almost half the contestants on the show choose to play "friend." Remarkably, the behavior of contestants remains unchanged even when stakes are...

This paper introduces a market based methodology for evaluating the performance of MBA programs. We seek to distinguish the quality of a program from the quality of its students. We judge a program's performance by its value added, measured by the graduates' salaries, after accounting for...

Since the launch of the iTunes Music Store in the US in 2003 and in much of Europe in the following years, music trade has shifted rapidly from physical to digital products, raising the availability of products in different countries. Despite substantial growth in availability, choice sets have...

The objective of this paper is to document the evolution of cross-border music trade patterns in this transition period and to explain what drives digital music trade patterns. The shift from analogue to digital music distribution has substantially reduced trade costs and has enlarged the choice...

Ad blockers allow Internet users to obtain information without generating ad revenue for site owners; and by 2016 they were used by roughly a quarter of site visitors. Given the ad-supported nature of much of the web, ad blocking poses a threat to site revenue and, if revenue losses undermine...

Digitization has vastly increased the amount of new music produced and available directly to consumers. While this has levelled the playing field between already-prominent and new artists, creators may now be dependent on platform decisions about which songs and artist to promote. With Spotify...

Radio signals are pure public goods whose total value to society is the sum of their value to advertisers and listeners. Because broadcasters can capture only part of the value of their product as revenue, there is the potential for a classic problem of underprovision. Small markets have much...

Political outcomes are well understood to depend on the spatial distribution of citizen preferences. In this paper, we document that the same holds for the individual decision to be politically active. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence on turnout, we show that citizens are...

Both asymmetric information (AI) and divergent expectations (DE) theories offer possible explanations of the litigation puzzle. Under DE, cases proceed to trial when, by chance, the plaintiff is more optimistic than the defendant. As the fraction of cases tried (T) declines, this leads to a...