Topic Digitalization

Workshop Economic and Psychological Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Self-employed

Based on various data sources, the workshop will examine the economic and psychological situation of the self-employed three years after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Next to analyzing the immediate impact of the crisis, the workshop will address the adjustment measures taken by the self-employed and the long-term consequences. Possible research questions include what strategies the self...

German Financial State Aid during Covid-19 Pandemic: Higher Impact among Digitalized Self-Employed

Sponsored Bids in Online Labor Markets

Advertising on e-commerce platforms, which enables third-party sellers to place their products as sponsored listings within organic results, is a widespread phenomenon, creating large revenues for online marketplaces. While economic theory suggests that advertising can serve as a signal for product quality, the empirical evidence is ambiguous. In this project, I collect data from a leading online...

Competition and Mergers with Strategic Data Intermediaries

We analyze mergers between strategic data intermediaries collecting consumer information that they sell to firms competing in a product market. We show that a merger: (a) reduces the intensity of competition in the product market through a change in the selling strategies of merging intermediaries; (b) increases data collection, reducing consumer surplus through a better rent extraction. We argue...

Sponsored Search: How Platforms Exacerbate Product Market Concentration

How does online advertising affect consumer behaviour, product pricing and competition? To analyse this, I develop a theory of digital markets where an intermediary provides a platform for firms to advertise their product and where consumers need to engage in costly search if they want to learn about the product characteristics. First, I show that when prices are observable...

GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps

Using data on 4.1 million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019, we document that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps; and in the quarters following implementation, entry of new apps fell by half. We estimate a structural model of demand and entry in the app market. Comparing long-run equilibria with and without GDPR, we find that GDPR reduces consumer surplus and...

German Financial State Aid during COVID-19 Pandemic: Higher Impact among Digitalized Self-Employed

In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the subjective survival probability. In particular, we investigate how the digitalization ...

German Financial State Aid during COVID-19 Pandemic: Higher Impact among Digitalized Self-Employed

In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the subjective survival probability. In particular, we investigate how the digitalization ...

German Financial State Aid during COVID-19 Pandemic: Higher Impact among Digitalized Self-Employed

In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the subjective survival probability. In particular, we investigate how the digitalization ...

The Value of Data for Prediction Policy Problems: Evidence from Antibiotic Prescribing

This is an online seminar using Cisco Webex. You will receive the login data with the invitation to the talk. Abstract:   Large-scale personal data collection for the purpose of personalized predictions has been driven by high expectations of efficiency gains in many business and policy settings. Yet, quantifying the trade-off between the costs of linking disconnected silos of personal...