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...
This paper provides novel empirical results on the welfare impact of sanctions when countries coordinate their sanctions packages. To do so, weconduct simulations with the Caliendo and Parro (2015) CGE model of the world economy that provides changes in welfare under different hypothetical setups of sanctions coalitions. Focusing on the 2012 wave of sanctions against Iran and the 2014 sanctions...
Over the course of the 20th century, governments have frequently used rent control to keep rents affordable, especially in times of crisis when housing is scarce. Existing research shows that rent control has undesirable side effects, such as overall societal welfare losses, market misallocation, a declining housing supply, and lower mobility. However, there has been little research examining the effect ...
This study examines short-, medium-, and long-run price expectations in housing markets. We derive and test six hypothesis about the incidence, formation, and relevance of price expectations. To do so, we use data from a tailored household survey, past sale and rental offerings, satellites, and from an information RCT. As novel findings, we show that price expectations exhibit mean reversion in the ...
Firms with superior productivity, labeled superstar firms, are argued to be the link between rising concentration and the fall of the aggregate labor share in the US. This analysis confirms that similar evidence is found within the European context: the market share and firm size increase, whereas the labor share decreases with productivity. One of the much discussed mechanisms behind this development ...