In this paper, we investigate the impact of ownership structure on corporate advertising expenditures. Using mutual fund mergers as an exogenous shock to ownership structure, we find that competing firms owned by the same institutional blockholders experience a significant reduction in...

We use a novel panel with detailed transaction records of more than one million de-identified individuals to study the effect of a large-scale Chinese government-issued digital coupon program on consumer spending. At the core of this stimulus program are a set of salient features that drive the...

We investigate the factors that affect the growth of Groupon, the leading online daily deals platform. We concentrate on the online-to-offline (O2O) aspect of the business that differentiates it from other e-commerce platforms - its strong connection to local markets. We focus on travel cost and...

Platform businesses are typically resource-intensive and must scale up their business quickly in the early stage to compete successfully against fast-emerging rivals. We study a critical question faced by such firms in the novel context of multi-category two-sided platforms: how to optimally...