126 research outputs found
Spillovers in networks of user generated content : evidence from 23 natural experiments on Wikipedia
Endogeneity in network formation hinders the identification of the role that
social networks play in generating spillovers, peer effects and other externalities.
This paper tackles this problem and investigates how the link network between
articles on the German Wikipedia influences the attention and content generation
individual articles receive. Identification exploits local exogenous shocks on a small
number of nodes in the network. It can thus avoid the usually required, but strong,
assumptions of exogenous observed characteristics and link structure in networks.
Exogenous variation is generated by natural and technical disasters or by articles
being featured on the German Wikipediaâs start page. The effects on neighboring
pages are substantial; I observe an increase of almost 100 percent in terms of both
views and content generation. The aggregate effect over all neighbors is also large: I
find that a view on a treated article converts one for one into a view on a neighboring
article. However, the resulting content generation is small in absolute terms.
My approach also applies if, due to a lack of network data, identification through
partial overlaps in the network structure fails (e.g. in classrooms). It helps bridge
the gap between the experimental and social network literatures on peer effects
99 cent: Price points in e-commerce
Basu (2006) argues that the prevalence of 99 cent prices in shops can be explained with rational consumers who disregard the rightmost digits of the price. This bounded rational behaviour leads to a Bertrand equilibrium with positive markups. We use data from an Austrian price comparison site and find results highly compatible with Basu's theory. We can show that price points - in particular prices ending in 9 - are prevalent and have significant impact on consumer demand. Moreover, these price points are sticky; neither the price-setter itself wants to change them neither the rivals do underbid these prices, if they represent the cheapest price on the market. --Competitive Behaviour,Pricing Behaviour,E-Commerce,Pricing in the Nines,Focal Pricing
99 cent: Price Points in E-Commerce
Basu (2006) argues that the prevalence of 99 cent prices in shops can be explained with rational consumers who disregard the rightmost digits of the price. This bounded rational behaviour leads to a Bertrand equi- librium with positive markups. We use data from an Austrian price com- parison site and find results highly compatible with Basu's theory. We can show that price points - in particular prices ending in 9 - are preva- lent and have significant impact on consumer demand. Moreover, these price points are sticky; neither the price-setter itself wants to change them neither the rivals do underbid these prices, if they represent the cheapest price on the market.e-commerce, price comparison, price policy
When private information settles the bill : money and privacy in Google's market for smartphone applications
We shed light on a money-for-privacy trade-off in the market for smartphone applications (âappsâ). Developers offer their apps cheaper in return for greater access to personal information, and consumers choose between lower prices and more privacy. We provide evidence for this pattern using data on 300,000 mobile applications which were obtained from the Android Market in 2012 and 2014. We augmented these data with information from Alexa.com and Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our findings show that both the marketâs supply and the demand side consider an appâs ability to collect private information, measured by their use of privacy-sensitive permissions: (1) cheaper apps use more privacy-sensitive permissions; (2) installation numbers are lower for apps with sensitive permissions; (3) circumstantial factors,
such as the reputation of app developers, mitigate the strength of this relationship. Our results
emerge consistently across several robustness checks, including the use of panel data analysis, the use of selected matched âtwinâ-pairs of apps and the use of various alternative measures of privacy-sensitiveness
Money and privacy : Android market evidence
We study the role of privacy in the market for mobile applications. For such programs
used with smartphones and tablet PCs a very important market has emerged.
Yet, neither the role of privacy on that market is well understood, nor do we have
empirical evidence regarding its role therein. We exploit data on 300,000 mobile applications
and almost 600 âapplications-pairsâ to analyze both sides of this market:
First, we analyze the price that application suppliers charge for more privacy. Second,
we study how usersâ installations are related to the âpersonal data greedinessâ
of mobile applications.
We provide the first empirical evidence on the main assumptions of recent early
models on suppliersâ and consumersâ strategies in this market. Our results show
that (1) consumers take it into account when applications request rights to collect
private information and (2) suppliers ask for more rights if they offer an app for free
than if they offer it for a fee
Mobile applications and access to private data : the supply side of the Android ecosystem
We analyze the data collection strategies of 65,000 developers in the market for mobile applications and track 300,000 applications over four years. Many apps belong to developers with multiple apps. This fact generates variation in the privacy behaviors of the same developer for our analysis. We uncover three stylized facts: First, developers âlearnâ to use increasingly intrusive data strategies as they become more experienced. Second, intrusive data collection is most likely in apps that target the 13+, and 16+ age category, which raises concerns for the protection of young app consumers. Third, even within developers, critical and atypical permissions predict problematic usage of private user data most successfully. Our findings inform both regulators and scientists who wish to model supply in the market for mobile apps
ICT, search behavior and market outcomes
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) help to reduce transaction costs in
several ways. The study of this phenomenon and the resulting economic consequences
are the underlying common theme in the four subsequent chapters of my dissertation.
Each of them is a self-contained paper that contributes to the field of Industrial
Organization. In particular, I contribute to the study of two important phenomena that
arose as a consequence of the ICT-enabled reduction in transaction costs, which modern
societies have seen over the last two decades: electronic commerce (E-Commerce,
in what follows) and (commons based) âpeer production
Spillovers in networks of user generated content : pseudo-experimental evidence on Wikipedia
I quantify spillovers of attention in a network of content pages, which is challenging,
because such networks form endogenously. I exploit exogenous variation in the
article network of German Wikipedia to circumvent this problem. Wikipedia prominently
advertises one featured article on its main site every day, which increases
viewership of the advertised article. Shifts in the viewership of adjacent articles are
due to their link from the treated article. Through this approach I isolate how the
link network causally influences usersâ search and contribution behavior.
I use a difference-in-differences analysis to estimate how attention spills to neighbors
through the transient shock of advertisement. I further develop an extended
peer effects model which relaxes the requirement of an exogenously given network.
This model enables the estimation of the underlying spillover. Advertisements affect
neighboring articles substantially: Their viewership increases by almost 70
percent. This, in turn, translates to increased editing activity. Attention is the
driving mechanism behind views and short edits. Both outcomes are related to the
order of links, while more substantial edits are not
IT outsourcing and firm productivity : eliminating bias from selective missingness in the dependent variable
Missing values are a major problem in all econometric applications based on survey data. A standard approach assumes data are missing-at-random and uses imputation methods, or even listwise deletion. This approach is justified if item non-response does not depend on the potentially missing variablesâ realization.
However, assuming missing-at-random may introduce bias if non-response is, in fact, selective. Relevant applications range from financial or strategic firm-level data to individual-level data on income or privacy-sensitive behaviors. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to deal with selective item nonresponse in the modelâs dependent variable. Our approach is based on instrumental variables that affect selection only through potential outcomes. In addition, we allow for endogenous regressors. We establish identification of the structural parameter and propose a simple two-step estimation procedure for it.
Our estimator is consistent and robust against biases that would prevail when assuming missingness at random. We implement the estimation procedure using firm-level survey data and a binary instrumental variable to estimate the effect of outsourcing on productivity
Does Wikipedia matter? : the effect of Wikipedia on tourist choices
We analyze the impact of information on Wikipedia on tourists' choices for travel destinations. Our results suggest a strong observational correlation between the
amount of content on Wikipedia and tourist overnight stays. We propose a check of whether this correlation is causal. For that, we introduce randomized exogenous
variation to articles' content. While our treatment is strong enough to affect content on the treated pages positively, we find no statistically significant effect of this treatment on tourist overnight stays
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