Related papers: Information Intermediaries in Monopolistic Screeni…
We study economies where consumers interact independently with many monopolists. When consumer valuations over goods are correlated, correlation can distort the induced distribution of consumer surplus (information rents). We identify which…
A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers tailor their choices to the demand data. The social…
Recent research in industrial organisation has investigated the essential place that middlemen have in the networks that make up our global economy. In this paper we attempt to understand how such middlemen compete with each other through a…
A monopolist offers personalized prices to consumers with unit demand, heterogeneous values, and idiosyncratic costs, who differ in a protected characteristic, such as race or gender. The seller is subject to a non-discrimination…
In the digital economy, technological innovations make it cheaper to produce high-quality content. For example, generative AI tools reduce costs for creators who develop content to be distributed online, but can also reduce production costs…
Intermediaries, like real estate agents, Consumer Reports, and Zagats, have long helped buyers to identify their most suitable options. Now, the combination of databases and the Internet enables them to serve consumers dramatically more…
We study competition between firms that contract with consumers before the consumers fully learn their product preferences. In a Hotelling duopoly, firms screen consumers by offering menus of option contracts. We characterize the unique…
Individuals often navigate several options with incomplete knowledge of their own preferences. Information provisioning tools such as public rankings and personalized recommendations have become central to helping individuals make choices,…
How does competition in markets for information affect the creation and division of surplus? We study this question in a search environment in which an agent searches sequentially for a high-quality good and learns about the quality of…
Algorithmic recommender systems such as Spotify and Netflix affect not only consumer behavior but also producer incentives. Producers seek to create content that will be shown by the recommendation algorithm, which can impact both the…
We study multi-product monopoly pricing where the seller jointly designs the selling mechanism and the information structure for the buyer to learn his values. Unlike the case with exogenous information, we show that when the seller…
Considering the impact of recommendations on item providers is one of the duties of multi-sided recommender systems. Item providers are key stakeholders in online platforms, and their earnings and plans are influenced by the exposure their…
In the context of nonlinear prices, the empirical evidence suggests that the consumers have cognitive biases represented in a limited understanding of nonlinear price structures, and they respond to some alternative perceptions of the…
Recent scholarly work has extensively examined the phenomenon of algorithmic collusion driven by AI-enabled pricing algorithms. However, online platforms commonly deploy recommender systems that influence how consumers discover and purchase…
Central to privacy concerns is that firms may use consumer data to price discriminate. A common policy response is that consumers should be given control over which firms access their data and how. Since firms learn about a consumer's…
We study the power of price discrimination via an intermediary in bilateral trade, when there is a revenue-maximizing seller selling an item to a buyer with a private value drawn from a prior. Between the seller and the buyer, there is an…
We analyze digital markets where a monopolist platform uses data to match multiproduct sellers with heterogeneous consumers who can purchase both on and off the platform. The platform sells targeted ads to sellers that recommend their…
In many markets buyers are poorly informed about which firms sell the product (product availability) and prices, and therefore have to spend time to obtain this information. In contrast, sellers typically have a better idea about which…
In recommendation settings, there is an apparent trade-off between the goals of accuracy (to recommend items a user is most likely to want) and diversity (to recommend items representing a range of categories). As such, real-world…
A mechanism is described that addresses the fundamental trade off between media producers who want to increase reach and consumers who provide attention based on the rate of utility received, and where overreach negatively impacts that…