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This paper develops an equilibrium framework to structure informational and non-informational content for ad messages in various market settings. The novel element in this framework is in assessing the viewer’s individual incentives to attend to elements of an ad relative to some other, non-ad-viewing activity. We prescribe ad content strategies across various (i) market factors, (ii) advertising goals, and (iii) ad formats (skippable versus non-skippable). Our framework classifies many advertising content strategies observed in practice. First, an advertiser can structure content to induce curiosity for continued viewing, a tactic prevalent in clickbait ads and “mystery ads”. Second, skippable ads have a lower return to non-informational content relative to non-skippable ads and explains the industry perception that ads on digital media are of lower copy quality than traditional ads. Finally, skippable ads are better suited for less ambitious advertising goals, such as brand awareness, when attention-spans are shorter. This latter result justifies the value proposition for the skippable format used by digital media platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook.

In contrast to the extensive literature on behavior bias by individuals, studies on behavior bias by firms have been relatively scarce. We explore the possibility of the latter in the context of U.S. airlines, where fuel hedging leads to lump sum gain or loss which is sunk to airlines' pricing decisions. Our results show that the (sunk) hedging gain or loss affects airlines' ticket prices. In particular, a 10% reduction in the reported fuel cost (due to hedging gain) leads to a 2.2% reduction in ticket prices. Moving onto non-price decisions, we find that hedging gain leads airlines to use larger aircrafts and reduce airtime of their flights, but has no impacts on the number of routes and flights which airlines operate. Our results provide empirical evidence that fixed/sunk costs can affect firms' price and non-price decisions, establish a link between financial market and product market competition, and have important welfare/policy and managerial implications.

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 advertising signals quality. We extend the standard models on ad signaling to the context of ad blocking. Our model incorporates both ad-production cost and ad-distribution cost, and allows ad quality (ad production) to impact consumers’ nuisance costs. We find that, counterintuitively, a lower ad blocking cost may result in fewer consumers blocking ads and higher profit for the advertiser. This is driven by the signaling function of advertising. In particular, the ad platform reacts to lower ad-blocking cost by lowering the unit ad-distribution cost it charges, forcing the advertiser to spend more on ad production because ad-distribution cost alone is insufficient to signal product quality. The high ad-production cost may offset consumers’ disutility of ad viewing and result in fewer consumers blocking ads when ad blocking becomes less costly. We also confirm the robustness of this insight with various model extensions and discuss the implications of our findings.

We explore the firm quasi-dynamics (entry/exit and growth) in the Chinese manufacturing industries and investigate how these dynamics vary across regions. Our results show that relative to provinces with less developed economies, in provinces with more developed economies: (1) There are higher shares of new firms; (2) New firms are smaller and more labor-intensive; (3) Firms exit at a quicker rate and surviving firms grow faster. These results point toward cross-region differences in market efficiency in terms of how much it costs a firm to enter or exit the market. Our findings shed light on how firms should adapt their strategies across regions and how the government should create sound policies on industrial upgrading and relocation.

Digital media platforms commonly use the skippable ad format, which gives a viewer the option to skip part of an advertisement after seeing some limited information, and jump directly to the desired content. It also enables these platforms to charge advertisers only when viewers attend to the entire ad. We develop a dynamic model of a viewer receiving incremental information from the advertiser and embed it in a two-sided market setting with an advertising market. Our results show that skippable ads can be less effective overall in converting existing viewers to advertisers. However, skippable ads bring more viewers to the platform and, in turn, induce more advertisers. This suggests that a switch to the skippable format is a profitable strategy for an emerging and growing platform, but not necessarily for one in a saturated market.

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 treated and matched group, and examine the impact of Spirit's baggage fee policy on its rivals' ticket prices. Our results show that Spirit's rivals reduce their prices by about 5.8% after Spirit charges carry-on baggage fee. Looking into potentially heterogeneous impacts, we find that the policy impact is smaller on low-cost carriers relative to legacy carriers. We also take into account subcontracting status. Relative to non-subcontracting carriers, those which subcontract operations to regional carriers reduce their prices further by more than 10%, including average price (linear or log) and various points on the price distribution. We also develop a stylized theory model to help better understand our empirical findings.

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-sharing, a driver may drive for both Uber and Lyft, and a rider may use both apps and request a ride from the company that has a driver close by. In this paper, we are interested in welfare implications of multi-homing in such a market. Our model abstracts away from entry/exit by drivers and riders as well as pricing by platforms. Both drivers' and riders' surpluses are determined by the average time between a request and the actual pickup. The benchmark setting is a monopoly platform and the direct comparison is a single-homing duopoly. The former is more efficient since it has a thicker market. Next, we consider two multi-homing settings, multi-homing on the rider side and multi-homing on the driver side. Relative to single-homing duopoly, we find that multi-homing on either side improves the overall welfare. However, multi-homing drivers potentially benefit themselves at the cost of single-homing drivers. In contrast, multi-homing riders benefit themselves as well as single-homing riders, representing a more equitable distribution of gains from multi-homing.

This study examines early career outcomes (i.e., tenure and promotion) of the Economics Ph.D. class of 2008. We find that relative to males in the same cohort, female economists are less likely (by 9.6%) to have received tenure and promotion during the first eight years since graduation. The gender gap becomes more pronounced, or 12%, among individuals of foreign origins working in the U.S. In addition, we find a similar gender bias regarding whether an individual remains in academia since the initial job placement in 2008. In particular, female faculty, particularly international women working in the U.S., are more likely to quit than their male counterparts in their post-doctoral careers. Compared to the existing literature, our sample includes a wide range of 57 U.S. economics programs, rather than a handful of top programs. Furthermore, we examine a new and growing dimension of the labor market for economics Ph.D.'s, i.e., women and internationals.

NIPE WP 04/ 2016, This article is a first look at the profit and welfare effects of behavior-based price discrimination in a two-period multi-dimensional preferences model. Compared to one-dimensional models, we show that firms compete less aggressively in both periods and so new results are obtained. Specifically, under forward looking consumers and two symmetric dimensions, BBPD boosts industry profits at the expense of consumers. However, we show that the standard one-dimensional welfare results can prevail under asymmetric dimensions and myopic consumers., FCT Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (COMPETE 2020, PORTUGAL 2020, FEDER)

This paper introduces two modifications to standard two-sided market models. In the first modification, one side of the agents (advertisers) make strategic choices (on quality of their ads) which affect the utility of agents joining the same platform on the other side. We show that this feature of strategic agents leads to qualitatively different econometric specifications for the estimation of group externality parameters. Relative to benchmark case, prices on both sides are lower under strategic agents, benefiting the agents at the cost of platforms. In the other modification, we introduce independent retailers between platforms and agents on the other side (readers). Our results suggest that this modification has no impact on estimating the group externality parameters. However, equilibrium prices on either side depend on group externality parameters at both sides. This is in sharp contrast to standard results where prices on one side depend only on group externality parameter of the other side. In the special case where each platform is split into two independent divisions, we find that equilibrium price is the same across all four divisions. Moreover, this common price depends on the product of the group externality parameters of the two sides.

Research Summary: Platform owners sometimes enter complementors' product spaces and compete against them. Using data from Amazon.com to study Amazon's entry pattern into third‐party sellers' product spaces, we find that Amazon is more likely to target successful product spaces. We also find that Amazon is less likely to enter product spaces that require greater seller efforts to grow, suggesting that complementors' platform‐specific investments influence platform owners' entry decisions. While Amazon's entry discourages affected third‐party sellers from subsequently pursuing growth on the platform, it increases product demand and reduces shipping costs for consumers. We consider the implications of these findings for complementors in platform‐based markets. Managerial Summary: Platform owners can exert considerable influence over their complementors' welfare. Many complementors with successful products are pushed out of markets because platform owners enter their product spaces and compete directly with them. To mitigate such risks, complementors could build their businesses by aggregating nonblockbuster products or focusing on products requiring significant platform‐specific investments to grow. They should also develop capabilities in new product discovery so that they could continually bring innovative products to their platforms.

We follow the framework in Arya and Mittendorf (2011) but extend their analysis by investigating supplier(s)' equilibrium choices of disclosure or confidentiality regarding their contract terms with the downstream retailers. In the case of a common supplier, we find that the unique SPNE is for the supplier to choose disclosure. This private incentive is opposite to social incentive which calls for the regulator to choose confidentiality. In the case of dedicated suppliers, however, there are multiple SPNE due to coordination issues between the suppliers. The case which maximizes social surplus -- disclosure -- can be supported as a SPNE, together with the case of confidentiality which maximizes supplier profits at the cost of everyone else.

Advancing in information technology has empowered firms with unprecedented flexibility when interacting with each other. We compare welfare results in a vertical market (e.g., manufacturers and retailers) across several types of pricing strategies depending upon (1) which side (retailers or manufacturers) chooses retail prices and (2) whether there is revenue sharing or linear pricing between the two sides. Our results are as follows. Under revenue sharing, retail prices (and thus industry profits) are higher if and only if they are chosen by the side featuring less competition. Under linear pricing, however, retail prices are higher if they are chosen by the side featuring more competition (for linear demand functions). Relative to linear pricing, revenue sharing always leads to lower retail prices, higher consumer surplus and social surplus. However, the comparison on industry profits depends on the demand elasticity ratios. Revenue sharing raises industry profits when the elasticity ratios are small, but the results are reversed when the elasticity ratios are large.

We use data from the 2007-2008 Ph.D. economist job market to investigate initial job placement in terms of job location, job type, and job rank. Our results suggest gender differences in all three dimensions of job placement. Relative to their male counterparts, female candidates are less (more) likely to be placed into academic (government or private sector) jobs and, on average, are placed into worse ranked jobs. Foreign female candidates are also more likely than foreign males to stay in the U.S. When foreign students are placed outside the U.S., they are more likely to be in academia than in government or private sector, while the opposite holds when foreign students are placed in the U.S., which is largely consistent with a stylized theory model. Our results also reveal various country/region heterogeneities in the type, location, and rank of job placements.

We analyze product differentiation in a multi-dimensional model with non-uniform consumer distribution. The level of product differentiation is measured by both unit transport costs and firm locations. Our analysis concerns both measures. First, fixing firms' locations, we show that equilibrium prices can increase or decrease with unit transport cost. The overall result depends on the interplay of a shifting effect and a rotating effect -- the latter exists only in multi-dimensional models. Second, fixing unit transport costs, we find that under non-uniform distribution, there may exist no equilibrium where firms maximize differentiation on one dimension but minimize differentiation on other dimensions. Instead, there may exist equilibrium where firms choose intermediate locations, contrary to the common findings in existing studies which assume uniform distribution.

We examine the profitability and welfare implications of price discrimination in a multi-dimensional model. First, when firms price discriminate on one and the same dimension, uniform price lies in between discriminatory prices and price discrimination raises profits relative to uniform pricing. This is in contrast to common findings in existing one-dimensional models featuring best-response asymmetry, suggesting that price discrimination can have qualitatively different implications in one- and multi-dimensional models. Second, price discrimination on one and the same dimension is the likely outcome when price discrimination decisions are endogenized using a two-stage discrimination-then-pricing game. Correspondingly, an observation of one-dimensional price discrimination in practice does not necessarily indicate that the underlying model should be one-dimensional.

We investigate the welfare impacts of price discrimination using a two-dimensional product differentiation model with best-response asymmetry. Among our findings: (i) Price discrimination has a reduced demand elasticity effect in two-dimensional models but not in one-dimensional models. (ii) Price discrimination on one and the same dimension can raise profits and uniform price lies in between the discriminatory prices. These results are similar to those in one-dimensional models of price discrimination but with best-response symmetry. (iii) Price discrimination on one but different dimensions and price discrimination on both dimensions are likely to lower profits, mimicking the standard results in one-dimensional models with best-response asymmetry. Overall our results suggest that regulators need to be more cautious with the practice of oligopolistic price discrimination under best-response asymmetry.

There is an extensive literature studying the welfare comparison of third-degree price discrimination vs. uniform pricing, typically under the assumption that all markets are served under uniform pricing. In this study, we allow market foreclosure and show that the welfare comparison of price discrimination vs. uniform pricing depends on whether market foreclosure is allowed. We also analyze how firms' foreclosure incentives vary with competition intensity. Our results show that an increase in competition intensity makes complete foreclosure less likely to be an equilibrium. On the other hand, the impact of competition intensity on partial foreclosure is non-monotonic. We also show that equilibrium under uniform pricing may feature strategic market foreclosure, defined as committing not to serve a market when demand there is positive.

This paper investigates the roles of price-matching guarantee as a response to `showrooming' (quality free-riding) and as a tool for predation. Employing a duopoly vertical differentiation model, we find that price-matching guarantee raises consumer surplus but its impact on social surplus is ambiguous. We identify two effects of price-matching guarantee on firms' profits. The change of sales effect improves the high quality firm's profit at the cost of its low quality rival while the intensified competition effect reduces both firms' profits. When the level of quality free-riding is sufficiently high, the change of sales effect dominates and price-matching guarantee raises the high quality firm's profit. On the other hand, when the level of quality free-riding is low, a price-matching guarantee lowers both firms' profits, suggesting a possible anti-trust rationale if adopted. That is, the high quality firm adopts a price-matching guarantee to drive the low quality firm out of market (predation through price-matching).

Existing studies on low‐price guarantees (LPGs) typically employ static models and the results are sensitive to modeling assumptions such as the type of guarantees, hassle costs and consumer heterogeneity. In contrast, we employ a fully dynamic model and show that LPGs robustly facilitate tacit collusion, by reducing a deviating firm's immediate deviation profit. This difference of results is because in a static model, any equilibrium has to be immune from any deviation, including infinitesimal deviation. In a dynamic model, however, one can ignore infinitesimal deviations since firms never have an incentive for such deviations.

Using a dynamic overlapping-generations model, we show that loyalty rewards robustly facilitate tacit collusion. We compare the sustainability of tacit collusion when uniform prices are used, when loyal customers are rewarded without using commitment, and when loyalty rewards are implemented by committing to offering customers either lower fixed repeat-purchase prices or fixed repeat-purchase discounts. We find that, relative to uniform prices, rewarding loyalty without using commitment on the equilibrium path makes tacit collusion easier to sustain, because a deviating firm is unable to steal one period of industry profit before losing all future profits. When loyalty rewards are offered by firms committing to repeat-purchase prices, collusion is even easier to sustain, because a deviating firm cannot renege on its discounted price for repeat-purchase customers. When firms commit to repeat-purchase discounts, they also commit to lowering the price for their repeat-purchase customers if they undercut the regular price, rendering tacit collusion to be even more readily sustainable. Our results hold whether products are homogeneous or horizontally differentiated as in a Hotelling model.

The price discrimination literature typically makes the assumption of no consumer arbitrage. This assumption is increasingly violated in the digital economy, where coupons are traded with increased frequency online. In this paper, we analyze the welfare impacts of coupon trading using a modified Hotelling model where firms send coupons to poach each other's loyal customers. The possibility of coupon trading renders this important instrument for price discrimination less effective. Moreover, coupon distribution has unintended consequences when coupon traders sell coupons back to a firm's loyal customers. Consequently, coupon trading may reduce firms' incentive to distribute coupons, leading to higher prices and profits. We find that, an increase in coupon distribution cost lowers promotion frequency but raises promotion depth, and an increase in the fraction of coupon traders lowers both promotion frequency and promotion depth.

We study the effects of introducing a Most-Favored Customer (MFC) clause on price competition among major consumer electronics retailers. Our data spans the periods before and after the introduction of an MFC clause by Best Buy, which occurred between April 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004. After controlling for various factors (including product life-cycle and seasonality effects), we find that, on average, Best Buy lowered its prices by 1.6% after introducing the MFC clause. Its competitors responded by cutting prices further: Buy.com by 3.5%, Circuit City by 2.2%, CompUSA by 3.2%, and Sears by 0.4%. Our empirical results are robust to a variety of measures and estimation methods. We conclude that Best Buy's MFC adoption reduced prices in the consumer electronics retail industry.

Unrestricted flows of information usually improve efficiency. The recent growth of the Internet as a medium of communication and commerce, combined with the development of sophisticated software tools have paved the road for the collection and analysis of a vast amount of data about consumers. Firms who possess such information can target individual consumers (or certain groups of consumers) more effectively. We investigate whether consumers can claim some of the value of their own private information, while at the same time efficient flows of information are guaranteed. We address this question in a principal-agent adverse selection model. Prior to the contracting stage, the agent (consumer) chooses how much (precision) of his private information to sell to the principal. This gives rise to a signaling game that precedes the adverse selection stage. We show that there exists a pooling efficient equilibrium, where both agent types sell all their information to the principal.

We introduce a flexible third-degree price discrimination framework by modeling the information firms possess about consumers’ locations (preferences) on the Salop circle as a partition. Higher information quality is translated into a partition refinement. In the limit, we obtain the perfect price discrimination paradigm. We show that the free-entry equilibrium number of firms exhibits a U-shape as a function of the quality of information. This implies that imperfect price discrimination generates the most efficient free-entry outcome. JEL classification: D43, L11, L43 Discrimination imparfaite par les prix, structure de marche et efficacite. Les auteurs produisent un cadre d’analyse flexible de la discrimination par les prix au troisieme degre en modelisant l’information que les firmes possedent a propos de la localisation (preferences) comme base de decoupage dans un cercle de Salop. Une plus grande qualite d’information se traduit par un decoupage plus fin. A la limite, on obtient le paradigme parfait de discrimination par les prix. On montre que le nombre de firmes en equilibre quand l’entree est libre est une fonction en forme de U dans son rapport avec la qualite de l’information. Cela implique que la discrimination imparfaite par les prix engendre le resultat le plus efficace quand l’entree est libre.