Related papers: Information Acquisition and Diffusion in Markets
The dynamics of information dissemination in social networks is of paramount importance in processes such as rumors or fads propagation, spread of product innovations or "word-of-mouth" communications. Due to the difficulty in tracking a…
Knowledge acquisition by consumers is a key process in the diffusion of innovations. However, in standard theories of the representative agent, agents do not learn and innovations are adopted instantaneously. Here, we show that in a…
In social network markets, the act of consumer choice in these industries is governed not just by the set of incentives described by conventional consumer demand theory, but by the choices of others in which an individual's payoff is an…
Interacting agents receive public information at no cost and flexibly acquire private information at a cost proportional to entropy reduction. When a policymaker provides more public information, agents acquire less private information,…
Previous work suggests that people's preference for different kinds of information depends on more than just accuracy. This could happen because the messages contained within different pieces of information may either be well-liked or…
Online social networking technologies enable individuals to simultaneously share information with any number of peers. Quantifying the causal effect of these technologies on the dissemination of information requires not only identification…
I develop a rather simple agent-based model to capture a co-evolution of opinion formation, political decision making and economic outcomes. I use this model to study how societies form opinions if their members have opposing interests.…
Social media are massive marketplaces where ideas and news compete for our attention. Previous studies have shown that quality is not a necessary condition for online virality and that knowledge about peer choices can distort the…
We study a social bandit problem featuring production and diffusion of knowledge. While higher connectivity enhances knowledge diffusion, it may reduce knowledge production as agents shy away from experimentation with new ideas and free…
This paper studies the widespread price dispersion of homogeneous products across different online platforms, even when consumers can easily access price information from comparison websites. We collect data for the 200 most popular hotels…
Consumers value keeping some information about them private from potential marketers. E-commerce dramatically increases the potential for marketers to accumulate otherwise private information about potential customers. Online marketers…
This paper explains four things in a unified way. First, how e-commerce can generate price equilibria where physical shops either compete with virtual shops for consumers with Internet access, or alternatively, sell only to consumers with…
Word-of-Mouth refers to the dynamics of interpersonal communication occurring during the diffusion of innovations (novel practices, ideas or products). According to field studies, word-of-mouth is made of both information seeking and…
This paper examines the relationship between changes in telecommunications provider concentration on international long distance routes and changes in prices on those routes. Overall, decreased concentration is associated with significantly…
Large quantities of data flow on the internet. When a user decides to help the spread of a piece of information (by retweeting, liking, posting content), most research works assumes she does so according to information's content,…
We study the diffusion of a true and a false message (the rumor) in a social network. Upon hearing a message, individuals may believe it, disbelieve it, or debunk it through costly verification. Whenever the truth survives in steady state,…
Our consumption of online information is mediated by filtering, ranking, and recommendation algorithms that introduce unintentional biases as they attempt to deliver relevant and engaging content. It has been suggested that our reliance on…
Today mobile users are intensively interconnected thanks to the emerging mobile social networks, where they share location-based information with each other when traveling on different routes and visit different areas of the city. In our…
Information sharing on social networks is ubiquitous, intuitive, and occasionally accidental. However, people may be unaware of the potential negative consequences of disclosures, such as reputational damages. Yet, people use social…
I characterize the consumer-optimal market segmentation in competitive markets where multiple firms selling differentiated products to consumers with unit demand. This segmentation is public---in that each firm observes the same market…