Asymmetric information can distort market outcomes. I study how the online disclosure of information affects consumers' behavior and firms' incentives to upgrade product quality in markets where information is traditionally limited. I first build a model of consumer search with firms' endogenous...

We conduct a field experiment on a movie-recommendation platform to identify if and how recommendations affect consumption. We use within-consumer randomization at the good level and elicit beliefs about unconsumed goods to disentangle exposure from informational effects. We find recommendations...

Platform interoperability is considered a powerful tool to promote competition in digital markets when network effects are at play. We study the effect of interoperability on competition between two ad-financed platforms, allowing for endogenous multi-homing of consumers. When the platforms are...

We analyze how a privacy regulation taking the form of a cap on information disclosure affects quality-enhancing innovation incentives by a monopolist—who derives revenues solely from disclosing user data to third parties—and consumer surplus. If the share of privacy-concerned users is...

Transitioning the economy from one that relies on fossil fuels to one that emphasizes renewable energy sources will have important implications for the pattern of natural resource use. Such a transition depends on government policies. As elected politicians have an incentive to weigh the...

I study an indefinitely repeated game where firms differ in size. Attempts to form cartels in such an environment, for example by rationing outputs in a manner linked to firm size differences, have generally struggled. Any successful cartel has to set production shares in a manner that ensures...

There is an emerging consensus that carbon emissions must be limited. An attractive approach to promoting carbon reductions is to encourage reductions in deforestation. But any such strategy must confront a basic problem: agents that might be induced to reduce their actions which would reduce...

School systems regularly use student assessments for accountability purposes. But, as highlighted by our conceptual model, different configurations of assessment usage generate performance-conducive incentives of different strengths for different stakeholders in different school environments. We...

Unfavorable news are often delivered under the disguise of vagueness. But are people sufficiently naive to be fooled by such positive spin? We use a theoretical model and a laboratory experiment to study the strategic use of vagueness in a voluntary disclosure game. Consider a sender who aims at...

We study incumbency advantage in markets with positive consumption externalities. Users of an incumbent platform receive stochastic opportunities to migrate to an entrant. They can accept a migration opportunity or wait for a future opportunity. In some circumstances, users have incentives to...