Platforms such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb serve two-sided markets with drivers (property owners) on one side and riders (renters) on the other side. Some agents multi-home. In the case of ride-hailing, a driver may drive for both Uber and Lyft, and a rider may use both apps and request a ride from...

Advances in information technology have greatly enhanced firms' ability to collect, market and utilize consumer information. As the market for consumer information expands rapidly, businesses are armed with unprecedented means to target any group of consumers they desire. This has important and...

The advance of ad-blocking technology is expected to have profound implications to the advertising industry. This paper makes the first attempt to understand the impacts of ad blocking on consumer's ad avoidance and optimal reactions by advertiser and ad platform while the primary role of...

In 2010, Spirit airlines announced that it would start charging passengers for carry-on baggage. Using a vector of route level characteristics, we construct a matched group consisting of routes which best match those served by Spirit (treated group). We then run a diff-in-diff estimation using...

The skippable ad format, commonly used by online content platforms, gives a viewer the option to skip part of an advertisement after seeing some limited information, and jump directly to her desired content. It also enables these platforms to charge advertisers only when viewers attend to the...

We examine how competition impacts the provision of product quality. Using a unique data set of inflight amenities provided by U.S. airlines, we find that the composition of competition matters with significantly higher product quality (Wi-Fi, entertainment, and power) on more competitive routes...

Consumer heterogeneity drives airlines to compete with each other through product lines, in the form of different flights and different ticket policies (e.g., change fee) on the same flight. Using ticket level data from a major Chinese online provider of travel services, we explore airlines'...

This paper shows the conditions for consumer sorting to be profitable. Sorting of low quality goods dampens their substitutability with high quality goods and can raise firm's profit even when sorting lowers profit from low quality sales considered alone

We employ a vertical differentiation model to examine the potential bias in pricing-to-market (PTM) results when using unit values aggregating differentiated products. Our results show that: i) false evidence of PTM ("pseudo PTM") is always found when using unit values, whether the law of one...

In many markets, firms have the option of advertising at price comparison sites to broaden their market reach. Such sites are often controlled by profit-maximizing "information gatekeepers" charging advertising fees. This paper considers vertical merger between such a monopoly information...