Quality Uncertainty And Adverse Selection In Online Sponsored-Search Markets

Sponsored-search mechanisms, where advertisers bid for better placement in the listing of search results on Yahoo! and Google, have emerged as the dominant revenue model for online search engines. Interestingly, Yahoo! and Google employ different mechanisms to determine the placement of bidders’ advertisements. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to extend the research relating quality and advertising in traditional markets to the online setting, and also examine whether intervention by the search intermediary impacts the outcomes observed in these markets. Using data from online sponsored-search auctions, we examine the relationship between advertisers’ quality and their advertising-intensity, indicated by their willingness to pay for search listings. We assess how this relationship differs across search, experience, and credence products characterized by differing degrees of quality uncertainty as well as across the two markets. We find significant differences in the quality-advertising relationships across the three product categories as well as across the two market mechanisms. We discuss the implications of our findings for consumers as well as intermediaries, and provide directions for future research in this emerging context

Quality Uncertainty And Adverse Selection In Sponsored Search Markets

Sponsored search mechanisms, where advertisers bid for placement to be as close to the top in the listing of search results, are the fastest growing among online search models. Sponsored search in popular search services such as Google and Yahoo! employ an auction mechanism wherein firms can bid, for a better placement in the (sponsored) search results, on relevant keywords used by consumers in their search process. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to test some of the predictions of earlier research relating quality and advertising, in the online setting. While sponsored search mechanisms have been gaining popularity, they can potentially introduce a bias in the listing of search results. In particular, sponsored search mechanisms that enable low quality bidders to be placed at the top of the search listings can adversely affect consumer welfare. Our study uses data from online sponsored search auctions to examine the relationship between advertisers' quality and their bidding strategies. Specifically we seek to understand if advertisers' bidding strategies differ across products characterized by different degrees of quality-uncertainty. Our results indicate that there are significant differences in the bidding strategies of sellers of search goods as compared to sellers of experience and credence goods, and that there is significant adverse selection in product categories characterized by greater uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our findings for consumers, advertisers, and intermediaries and provide directions for future research in this emerging context

The Economics of Labor Market Intermediation: An Analytic Framework

Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) are entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved. This paper offers a conceptual foundation for analyzing the economic role played by these understudied institutions, and to develop a qualitative and, in some cases, quantitative sense of their significance to market operation and welfare. Though heterogeneous, I argue that LMIs share a common function, which is to redress – and in some cases exploit – a set of endemic departures of labor market operation from the efficient neoclassical benchmark. At a rudimentary level, LMIs such as online job boards reduce search frictions by aggregating and reselling disparate information at a cost below which workers and firms could obtain themselves. Beyond passively supplying information, a set of LMIs forcibly redress adverse selection problems in labor markets by compelling workers and firms to reveal normally hidden credentials, such as criminal background, academic standing, or financial integrity. At their most forceful, LMIs such as labor unions and centralized job matching clearinghouses resolve coordination and collective action failures in markets by tightly controlling – even monopolizing – the process by which workers and firms meet, match and negotiate. A unifying observation of the analytic framework is that participation in the activities of a given LMI are typically voluntary for one side of the market and compulsory for the other; workers cannot, for example, elect to suppress their criminal records and firms cannot opt out of collective bargaining. I argue that the nature of participation in an LMI’s activities – voluntary or compulsory, and for which parties – is dictated by the market imperfection that it addresses and thus tells us much about its economic function.intermediation, unions, job search, internet, temporary-help, adverse selection, collective action

Quality Uncertainty And Adverse Selection In Sponsored Search Markets

Sponsored search mechanisms, where advertisers bid for placement to be as close to the top in the listing of search results, are the fastest growing among online search models. Sponsored search in popular search services such as Google and Yahoo! employ an auction mechanism wherein firms can bid, for a better placement in the (sponsored) search results, on relevant keywords used by consumers in their search process. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to test some of the predictions of earlier research relating quality and advertising, in the online setting. While sponsored search mechanisms have been gaining popularity, they can potentially introduce a bias in the listing of search results. In particular, sponsored search mechanisms that enable low quality bidders to be placed at the top of the search listings can adversely affect consumer welfare. Our study uses data from online sponsored search auctions to examine the relationship between advertisers' quality and their bidding strategies. Specifically we seek to understand if advertisers' bidding strategies differ across products characterized by different degrees of quality-uncertainty. Our results indicate that there are significant differences in the bidding strategies of sellers of search goods as compared to sellers of experience and credence goods, and that there is significant adverse selection in product categories characterized by greater uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our findings for consumers, advertisers, and intermediaries and provide directions for future research in this emerging context

Views of healthcare professionals to linkage of routinely collected healthcare data : a systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Reporting of adverse events of treatment interventions in multiple myeloma: an overview of systematic reviews

The present study is an overview of systematic reviews focusing on adverse events of antimyeloma treatments. It provides a systematic description of adverse events as they are reported in the systematic reviews as well as a critical appraisal of included reviews. We conducted a comprehensive literature search in the most widely used electronic databases looking for systematic reviews that had an adverse event of an antimyeloma treatment intervention as primary outcome. Two independent reviewers conducted selection of included studies and data extraction on predesigned online forms and assessed study quality using AMSTAR 2. Overall corrected covered area (CCA) was calculated to examine the overlap of primary studies across systematic reviews. After screening eligible studies, 23 systematic reviews were included in this overview. Seven reviews with overall CCA of 14.7% examined cardiovascular adverse events of different drugs, including immunomodulatory drugs and proteasome inhibitors (mainly carfilzomib). Nine focused on infections, presenting with overall CCA of 5.8%, each one focused on a different drug or drug class. Three studied thromboembolism in patients treated either with lenalidomide, any immunomodulatory drug, or with daratumumab and had an overall CCA equal to 1.5%. Four more reviews focused on bortezomib-associated neurotoxicity, carfilzomib-associated renal toxicity, or second primary malignancies as an adverse event of lenalidomide or anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody treatment. The quality of included studies as judged by AMSTAR 2 was mostly critically low. Absence of a priori registered protocol and formal assessment of risk of bias of included primary studies were the most common shortcomings. Reporting of antimyeloma drug-associated toxicity is supported by multiple systematic reviews; nevertheless, methodological quality of existing reviews is mostly low

The State of Private Sector Electronic Labour Exchange Services in Canada

This report has two aims. The first is to provide a descriptive overview of the services offered by private sector electronic labour exchanges (ELEs) in Canada. The second is to assess those services in terms of their likely effects on labour market matching, their accessibility, and the degree to which they satisfy the needs of all Canadian jobseekers and employers. The report finds that there is a robust private sector in ELE services in Canada. The private sector provides a broader range of services than the main public sector alternative, Job Bank. However, there are key areas in which the private sector does not deliver adequate services. The public sector, through Job bank, can take the lead in providing specialized job-search services tailored toward groups with unique labour market needs.labour market matching, electronic labour exchange services, private sector, public sector

What are the Best Practices for Measuring Learning Agility, Cognitive Ability, and Personal Inventory and How are Companies Currently Using Them?

[Excerpt] Research shows that the careful use of talent assessments can result in increased productivity, cost savings and better retention of top employees. As a result, nearly two-thirds of recruiting executives are considering their organizations’ assessment and selection capabilities as one of their top three near-term priorities and are increasing their budgets by an average of 15%. Unfortunately, many HR professionals are unaware of the value of formal assessments and the types of assessments that have proven to be most effective