Mixed Pricing in Online Marketplaces

A rich theory literature predicts mixed strategies in posted prices due to standard price discrimination, search frictions, and various other rationales. While typically interpreted as implying occasional sales or price dispersion, online marketplaces enable a firm to truly use randomization as a tool in pricing, and so such behavior should be expected to arise in online settings. We investigate a case of mixed pricing across a large subset of products on a major e-commerce website. We first test for randomizing behavior, and then construct a model of price discrimination that would generate randomization as optimal behavior. We estimate the model and use it to assess pricing effects of a proposed merger in the industry

Essays on Industrial Organization

This dissertation consists of three essays in the area of Industrial Organization. The first essay established the theoretical motivations for, and implications of, exclusive contracts, with an application to smartphones. Why would Apple choose to distribute its smartphone through only one carrier, and why would AT&T bid the most for exclusivity? I develop a model which shows that if upstream handset manufacturers face a relatively low price elasticity for their good compared to downstream wireless carriers, exclusive contracts can maximize their joint profits. An exclusive contract reduces price competition in the final good market but also increases returns to innovation for parties outside the contract, such as Google’s Android. Different price elasticities among downstream firms due to network quality differences lead to different valuations of the exclusive contract. The second essay estimates the relative elasticities of smartphone and carrier demand using simulation and MCMC methods on a detailed monthly dataset of consumer decisions over 2008-2010. Counterfactual simulations show the importance of recomputing the price equilibrium to understanding the observed market structure. Accounting for price effects, AT&T had the highest value of exclusivity with Apple, and was willing to compensate Apple $148 per unit sale foregone. Apple’s exclusivity increased entry incentives for Android handset makers by approximately$1B. The third essay uses data on US newspapers from the early 20th century to study the economic incentives that shape ideological diversity in the media. My co-authors and I show that households prefer newspapers whose political content agrees with their own ideology, that newspapers with the same political content are closer substitutes than newspapers with different political content, and that newspapers seek both to cater to household tastes and to differentiate from their competitors. We estimate a model of newspaper demand, entry, and affiliation choice that captures these forces. We show that competitive incentives greatly enhance the extent of ideological diversity in local news markets, and we evaluate the impact of policies designed to increase such diversity

Media Competition and News Diets

News media operate in two-sided markets, offering bundles of content to readers as well as selling readers' attention to advertisers. Technological innovations in content delivery, such as the advent of broadcast television or of the Internet, affect both sides of the market, threatening the basic economic model of print news operations. We examine how the entry of television affected local newspapers as well as consumer media diets in the United States. We develop a model of print media and show that entry of national television news could adversely affect the provision of local news. We construct a novel dataset of U.S. newspapers' economic performance and content choices from 1944 to 1964. Our empirical strategy exploits quasi-random variation in the timing of the entry of television in different markets. We show that the entry of television was a negative shock for newspapers, particularly evening newspapers, in both the readership and advertising markets. Further, we find a drop in the total quantity of news printed, in particular original reporting, raising concerns about the provision of local news

The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.

Do Newspapers Serve the State? Incumbent Party Influence on the US Press, 1869-1928

Using data from 1869 to 1928, we estimate the effect of party control of state governments on the entry, exit, circulation, prices, number of pages, and content of Republican and Democratic daily newspapers. We exploit changes over time in party control of the governorship and state legislatures in a differences-in-differences design. We exploit close gubernatorial elections and state legislatures with small majorities in a parallel regression-discontinuity design. Neither method reveals evidence that the party in power affects the partisan composition of the press. Our confidence intervals rule out modest effects, and we find little evidence of incumbent party influence even in times and places with high political stakes or low commercial stakes. The one exception is the Reconstruction South, an episode that we discuss in detail

Addressing Health Needs of Burlington Probation and Parole Clients

Introduction. Higher rates of recidivism have been observed in offenders with specific health risks. Criminal justice literature identifies probation/parole as an ideal time to im-plement health interventions to reduce recidivism, but significant barriers existhttps://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1093/thumbnail.jp

More Competitive Search Through Regulation

This paper identifies a set of possible regulations that could be used both to make the search market more competitive and simultaneously ameliorate the harms flowing from Google's current monopoly position. The purpose of this paper is to identify conceptual problems and solutions based on sound economic principles and to begin a discussion from which robust and specific policy recommendations can be drafted

The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We focus our analysis on the years 1869-1928, and we use the remaining years of data to look at changes over time. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents. (JEL D72, L11, L82, N41, N42, N81, N82)