Information Economics and Policy最新文献

{"title":"Mobile money and financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Lukasz Grzybowski ,&nbsp;Valentin Lindlacher ,&nbsp;Onkokame Mothobi","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101064","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101064","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, we utilize survey data collected in 2017 from 12,735 individuals across nine Sub-Saharan African countries. We merge the survey data with geographic information related to the proximity of mobile network towers and banking facilities, based on the geo-locations of the respondents. Our estimation approach comprises a two-stage model. In the first stage, consumers make choices between adopting a feature phone or a smartphone. In the second stage, they make decisions regarding the use of mobile money services. Our findings reveal that network coverage significantly influences the adoption of mobile phones. Moreover, we observe that mobile money services are more favored by younger and relatively wealthier individuals for sending money, while older individuals and those with lower incomes tend to use mobile wallets for receiving money. Consequently, mobile money services facilitate younger migrant workers residing in areas with better infrastructure in providing support to their older relatives in less developed regions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101064"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136059565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Information, mis-information, and history-based price discrimination in a duopoly","authors":"Sumit Shrivastav","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101059","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101059","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>In this paper, we analyze the competitive and welfare effects of imperfect consumer recognition based on the consumers' purchase history in a duopoly<span> model with discrete brand preferences and switching costs. We demonstrate that the impact of consumer recognition on firms' pricing strategies, </span></span>industry profits, and welfare crucially depends on the accuracy of consumer recognition, i.e., the relative magnitude of correct and incorrect consumer recognition. An increase in the extent of incorrect recognition softens the competition if it is less than that of correct recognition; otherwise, it intensifies the competition. The impact of the accuracy of the information on consumer surplus and welfare follows from price and profit effects. We also analyze asymmetric price discrimination and the optimal strategies of a data broker if firms purchase consumer recognition technology from it.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101059"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134918411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Search with two stages of information acquisition: A structural econometric model of online purchases","authors":"Peter Gibbard","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101057","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101057","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper presents a methodology for estimating a sequential model of online consumer search. The literature on such structural econometric models typically assumes that, for each alternative, there is only one stage of optimal information acquisition. For many e-commerce websites, however, there are two stages: obtaining information from (1) the search results page and (2) clicking on an alternative. We develop a methodology for estimating a model with two stages, in which the consumer makes optimal decisions in each stage. The search problem is viewed as a variant of a multi-armed bandit problem. We estimate this model using a dataset of clicks and purchases on the website expedia.com. In contrast to models with one stage of optimal information acquisition, our model can be used to analyse not only the clicking and purchasing behaviour of consumers but also the extent to which they browse alternatives on the search results page.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101057"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624523000422/pdfft?md5=fd5c5a162e8b4a2be047aa97d89c8f91&pid=1-s2.0-S0167624523000422-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135389741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The environmental impact of Internet regulation","authors":"Jean-Christophe Poudou ,&nbsp;Wilfried Sand-Zantman","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101060","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101060","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We address the need to regulate Internet infrastructure usage to take into account environmental externalities. We model the interactions between an internet service provider and some content providers in settings where the former chooses the network size and the latter influence congestion on the network. We then discuss how different regulatory frameworks (Net Neutrality, Laissez-Faire, Price Regulation) impact both the economic efficiency and the environmental performance. In particular, we highlight that inducing more efficiency effort from the content providers may either improve or worsen the final environmental outcome, and provide some conditions for one case or the other to prevail.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101060"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136119313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing the benefits of high-speed broadband: Lessons from Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN)","authors":"Andrew Sinclair","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101062","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101062","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study reviews the economic benefits analysis conducted in 2014 for the National Broadband Network (NBN), one of Australia's largest ever public infrastructure projects. The review identifies that the NBN's benefits were overstated due to error by an estimated $17–20 billion in 2014 present value terms, an amount sufficient to eliminate the NBN's forecast net economic benefits. To provide an updated view on the benefits of high-speed broadband in 2022, a stated choice experiment is conducted, finding that the WTP has grown since 2014 at an annual real rate of 8.8 percent for download speeds and 11.5 percent for upload speeds. Even at these growth rates, however, the benefits of the NBN remain materially lower than forecast in 2014. Further, the analysis finds high heterogeneity in the household WTP, with smaller and lower-income households reluctant to pay a premium for speeds much faster than 50 Mbps, indicating that the adoption of the fastest available broadband speeds is likely to remain low. The study highlights the potential value of cost-benefit analyses, but also the risks, particularly where they are relied on to justify enduring extensions of government ownership and control. The paper concludes by identifying learnings for policymakers and cost-benefit analysis practitioners seeking to assess and optimize the economic value of public infrastructure investments.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101062"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624523000471/pdfft?md5=3adc8e87d89b5167172170543fd3519b&pid=1-s2.0-S0167624523000471-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136128185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of broadband Internet on public media: Evidence from China","authors":"Ce Matthew Shi ,&nbsp;Danhou Li","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101058","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101058","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper investigates the impact of broadband Internet on the provision of public media in a large developing country. We use new panel data on public broadcasting at the province level from 2005 to 2017 and a control function approach exploiting variation in China's centralized roll-out of digital infrastructure. We find that rising broadband penetration has substantial negative impacts on the quantity of public media provision—including news, public-service programs, and entertainment—in China's local radio and television. Except for news, these effects are driven by changes in both the extensive margin (i.e., fewer channels) and the intensive margin (i.e., less broadcasting per channel). While industry ad revenues decrease significantly, ad intensity and volume per channel increase with higher broadband penetration rates. Lastly, we find that broadband Internet attracts young, educated, and urban viewers away from television but has no effect on the elderly, the less educated, and those with low-paying jobs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101058"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135429359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Complementarities in learning from data: Insights from general search","authors":"Maximilian Schaefer ,&nbsp;Geza Sapi","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101063","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101063","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The ability to make accurate predictions relating to consumer preferences is a key factor of a digital firm's success. Examples include targeted advertisements and, more broadly, business models relying on capturing consumers' attention. The prediction technologies used to learn consumer preferences rely on consumer generated data. Despite the importance of data-driven technologies, there is a lack of knowledge about the precise role that data-scale plays for prediction accuracy. From a policy perspective, a better understanding about the role of data is needed to assess the risks that “big data” might pose for competition. This article highlights potential complementarities between different data dimensions in algorithmic learning. We analyze our hypothesis using search engine data from Yahoo! and provide evidence that more data in the <em>within-user</em> dimension enhances the efficiency of algorithmic learning in the <em>across-user</em> dimension. Our findings suggest that ignoring these complementarities might lead to underestimating scale advantages from data.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101063"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136059410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mobile payments and interoperability: Insights from the academic literature","authors":"Milo Bianchi ,&nbsp;Matthieu Bouvard ,&nbsp;Renato Gomes ,&nbsp;Andrew Rhodes ,&nbsp;Vatsala Shreeti","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101068","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>We connect various streams of academic literature to analyze how alternative competition and regulatory policies may affect the development of digital financial services, and particularly of mobile payments. Our main objective is to highlight the extent to which existing models, often coming from related </span>industries (such as telecom, payments, and banking) can be applied to study the effects of mobile money interoperability. We focus on four dimensions of interoperability. First, we consider mobile network interoperability (whether clients of one telecom can access another telecom's payment services) in connection with the IO literature on tying. Second, we discuss platform level interoperability (the ability to send money off-network) in light of the literature on compatibility. We also build on the behavioral IO literature to suggest how the effects of interoperability may be very heterogeneous across various types of firms and consumers, or even backfire. Third, we consider interoperability in the cash-in-cash-out agent network, in light of the literature on co-investment in network industries, and of more specific studies on ATMs' interoperability. Fourth, we discuss how the literature in banking and on data ownership can be used to understand interoperability of data. We conclude with some broader remarks on policy implications and on possible directions for future research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101068"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138474986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Network infrastructure construction and heterogeneous enterprise innovation quasi-natural experiment based on “Broadband China”","authors":"Zhizhong liu,&nbsp;Bin Ju","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101066","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101066","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Based on the technology choice model proposed by Bustos (2011) and the infrastructure spillover model developed by Dugga (1999), this paper aims to explore the multifaceted effects of network infrastructure construction on both radical and incremental enterprise innovation, while considering the micro perspective of enterprise and industry heterogeneity. The findings of this study uncover the following significant insights: (1) The implementation of network infrastructure construction exerts a substantial positive impact on both radical and incremental innovation within enterprises, affirming its crucial role in fostering innovation capabilities; (2) In the context of firm heterogeneity, the impact of network infrastructure construction on fostering radical and incremental innovation is particularly pronounced among medium-sized and large-scale enterprises, as well as state-owned enterprises; (3) Network infrastructure construction stimulates radical innovation primarily among local enterprises, whereas export-oriented enterprises tend to benefit more from incremental innovation; (4) When considering industry heterogeneity, the analysis demonstrates that network infrastructure construction fosters radical innovation in industries characterized by high concentration, intense competition, and advanced technology. On the other hand, in industries with low concentration and limited competition, network infrastructure construction tends to facilitate incremental innovation within enterprises. (5) Moreover, the study finds that the impact of network infrastructure construction on enterprise innovation is mediated by talent structure and financing constraints. These factors serve as crucial conduits through which network infrastructure construction facilitates both radical and incremental innovation. Furthermore, the paper acknowledges that the digital transformation of enterprises partially regulates these channels. Overall, this research offers valuable insights for enterprises in developing countries aiming to strengthen various forms of innovation in the digital era.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 101066"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135455796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pay-for-delay settlements and patent expansion practices","authors":"Anton-Giulio Manganelli","doi":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101044","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101044","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Pay-for-delay (reverse payments) settlements and patent expansion practices (PEP), such as preemptive patenting, product hopping and evergreening, have been criticized for their potential anticompetitive effects. This paper shows that reverse payments and PEP are strategic substitutes and, when the information over the patents’ strength is asymmetric and patents’ strength is endogenous, a ban on reverse payments may reduce consumer surplus. This effect is stronger the more generic competition reduces industry profits. When the cost of using PEP is sufficiently high, a ban on reverse payments is optimal, otherwise it is optimal to allow reverse payments at the minimal level consistent with the originator not engaging in PEP. Results are qualitatively robust to allowing PEP to increase patent quality and consumer surplus.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47029,"journal":{"name":"Information Economics and Policy","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 101044"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45326600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}