Our Latest Articles & Papers

- MSc Thesis

The Impact of Online Product Ratings on Consumer Behavior

Using data from a randomized experiment that results from a collaboration with a large Video on Demand platform, we examine the effect of online ratings on consumer behavior. In particular, we look at how consumers’ willingness to pay and subjective ratings are influenced by contrasting a decision environment where ratings exist against an environment where ratings are omitted.

- Paper

Follow The Money: Online Piracy and Self-Regulation in the Advertising Industry

We study the effects of a self-regulation effort, orchestrated by the European Commission in 2016 and finalized in 2018, that aims to reduce advertising revenues for publishers of copyright infringing content. Data on the third-party HTTP requests made by a large number of piracy websites lets us observe the relations of the piracy and advertising industry over time. We compare these dynamics to a control group of non-advertising services which are not subject to the self-regulation.

- PhD Thesis

Leveraging Upon Large Scale Media and Communications Datasets for Socio-Economic and Policy Analysis

In this dissertation, we use large datasets on the consumption of media and telecommunications by individuals and households for socio-economic and policy analysis. In three essays we tackle three different topics, the first with a stronger economic focus, the second with a stronger business focus, and the third with a policy focus: “the first essay […]

- PhD Thesis

Essays on Telecommunications Management: Understanding Consumer Switch, Search and Purchase Behavior

The thesis is comprised of three studies focusing on consumer switch, search and purchase behaviors. The first study, focusing on consumer switching decisions, investigates the impact of lock in shortening policies on both firm profits and consumer welfare. The later two studies focus on consumer search and purchase behaviors in a representative telecom service market […]

- Paper

The Next Wave of Digital Technological Change and the Cultural Industries

In this proposal of a research agenda for cultural economics, we discuss the supply-side economics of the next wave of digital technological change.
We begin by arguing that digitization and internet-enabled platforms, together with automated licensing of user-generated content has substantially lowered the costs of individual-level cultural participation. We discuss how the dependence on advertising revenues may affect this dynamic and highlight some implications for the economics of copyright.

- Paper

Recommender Systems and Consumer Welfare: Results from a Randomized Experiment in Video-on-Demand

Recommender systems assign products to slots in ways that improve consumers’
experience when choosing what to buy. They usually lead to more sales, which increases
both consumer surplus and profit. However, firms may also choose which recommender
system to use to maximize profit.

- Paper

The Impact of Time Shifting on TV Consumption and Ad Viewership

In this paper we study the impact of time-shifting on TV consumption and ad viewership. We analyze the results of a field experiment in which a random sample of ”triple-play” households were given a set of premium TV channels broadcasting popular movies and TV shows without commercial breaks.

- Paper

The Effect of Subscription Video-on-Demand on Piracy: Evidence From a Household Level Randomized Experiment

We partner with a major multinational telecommunications provider to analyze the effect of subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services on digital piracy. For a period of 45 consecutive days, a group of randomly selected households who used BitTorrent in the past were gifted with a bundle of TV channels with movies and TV shows that could be streamed as in SVoD.

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