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Economics

A collection of 54 issues

Missing Market for Academics

There are a few different options for buying time with industry experts, e.g., https://officehours.com/, https://intro.co/, etc. However, there is no marketplace for buying academics’ time. Some surplus is likely lost as a result. For one, some academics want advice on what they write. To get

Not Recommended: Why Current Content Recommendation Systems Fail Us

Recommendation systems paint a wonderful picture: The system automatically gets to know you and caters to your preferences. And that is indeed what happens except that the picture is warped. Warping happens for three reasons. The first is that humans want more than immediate gratification. However, the systems are designed

Not Normal, Optimal

Reports of blood work generally include guides for normal ranges. For instance, for LDL-C, in the US, a score of < 100 (mg/DL) is considered normal. But neither the reports nor doctors have much to say about what LDL-C level to aspire for. The same holds true for things

Why Are the Prices the Same?

Many times within a narrow product category like breakfast cereals, ice cream tubs, etc., the prices of different varieties within a brand are the same. The same pattern continues in many ice cream stores where you are charged for the quantity instead of the flavor or the vessel in which

When Is Discrimination Profit-Maximizing?

Consider the following scenario: There are multiple firms looking to fill identical jobs. And there are multiple eligible workers given each job opening. Both the company and the workers have perfect information, which they are able toacquire without cost. Assume also that employees can switch jobs without cost. Under these

Generative AI and the Market for Creators

Many widely used machine-learning models rely on copyrighted data. For instance, Google finds the most relevant web pages for a search term by relying on a machine learning model trained on copyrighted web data. But the use of copyrighted data by machine learning models that generate content (or give answers

Hidden Code: Why Do Companies Open Source Code and Publish Papers?

Hardly a day passes without a major company announcing the release of a new scientific paper or code around a powerful technique. But why do so many companies open source (via papers and code) so many impactful technologies almost as soon as they are invented? The traditional answers—to attract

Tipping Lemons: Market Failures in Tips

Say that people can be easily identified by characteristic C. Say that the average tip left by people of group C_A is smaller than !C_A with a wide variance in tipped amounts within each group. Let’s assume that the quality of service (two levels: high or low)

Is The Price Right? Dramatic Variability in Prices of Generic Goods Over Short Periods on Major Web Retailers

It used to be that retail prices of generic products like coffee mugs, soap, etc., moved slowly. Not anymore. On major web retailers like Amazon, for a range of generic household products, the variation in prices over short periods of time is immense. For instance, on 12-Piece Porcelain, 12 Oz.

Out of Network: The Tradeoffs in Using Network Based Targeting

In particular, in 521 villages in Haryana, we provided information on monthly immunization camps to either randomly selected individuals (in some villages) or to individuals nominated by villagers as people who would be good at transmitting information (in other villages). We find that the number of children vaccinated every month