Is digitization destroying the music industry? A recent study shows that it may improve it by enabling new acts to enter at low cost.
(Ch. 14, “Digitization and the Quality of New Media Products”)
What aren’t you doing while you are spiraling down an Internet black hole? Mostly watching TV and offline socializing, according to a recent study.
(Ch. 2, “What Are We Not Doing When We Are Online”)
Trying to predict where software piracy is prevalent? Look for a country with weak governance institutions and a substantial middle class.
(Ch. 15, “The Nature and Incidence of Software Piracy”)
As the cost of storing, sharing, and analyzing data has decreased, economic activity has become increasingly digital. New industries have been created, old industries have been threatened and in some cases disappeared, and some foresee a new era in which economy-wide change could rival that of the Industrial Revolution. What does the experience to date suggest about the functioning and impact of the digital economy?
Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy, edited by Avi Goldfarb, Shane M. Greenstein, and Catherine E. Tucker, is a new volume in the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report series published by the University of Chicago Press. The volume presents early insights on the functioning and impact of the digital economy and explores how digital communication, online commerce, and the growing importance of markets that rely on them have affected the behavior of consumers, firms, and governments.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Avi Goldfarb, Shane M. Greenstein, and Catherine E. Tucker
I. Internet Supply and Demand
1. Modularity and the Evolution of the Internet
Timothy Simcoe
Comment: Timothy F. Bresnahan
2. What Are We Not Doing When We Are Online?
Scott Wallsten
Comment: Chris Forman
II. Digitization, Economic Frictions, and New Markets
3. The Future of Prediction: How Google Searches Foreshadow Housing Prices and Sales
Lynn Wu and Erik Brynjolfsson
4. Bayesian Variable Selection for Nowcasting Economic Time Series
Steven L. Scott and Hal R. Varian
5. Searching for Physical and Digital Media: The Evolution of Platforms for Finding Books
Michael R. Baye, Babur De los Santos, and Matthijs R. Wildenbeest
Comment: Marc Rysman
6. Ideology and Online News
Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro
7. Measuring the Effects of Advertising: The Digital Frontier
Randall Lewis, Justin M. Rao, and David H. Reiley
8. Digitization and the Contract Labor Market: A Research Agenda
Ajay Agrawal, John Horton, Nicola Lacetera, and Elizabeth Lyons
Comment: Christopher Stanton
9. Some Economics of Private Digital Currency
Joshua S. Gans and Hanna Halaburda
III. Government Policy and Digitization
10. Estimation of Treatment Effects from Combined Data: Identification versus Data Security
Tatiana Komarova, Denis Nekipelov, and Evgeny Yakovlev
11. Information Lost: Will the “Paradise” that Information Promises, to Both Consumer and Firm, be “Lost” on Account of Data Breaches? The Epic is Playing Out
Catherine L. Mann
Comment: Amalia R. Miller
12. Copyright and the Profitability of Authorship: Evidence from Payments to Writers in the Romantic Period
Megan MacGarvie and Petra Moser
Comment: Koleman Strumpf
13. Understanding Media Markets in the Digital Age: Economics and Methodology
Brett Danaher, Samita Dhanasobhon, Michael D. Smith, and Rahul Telang
14. Digitization and the Quality of New Media Products: The Case of Music
Joel Waldfogel
15. The Nature and Incidence of Software Piracy: Evidence from Windows
Susan Athey and Scott Stern
Comment: Ashish Arora
List of Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index
Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy
The preceding is republished on TAP with permission by its author, Professor Shane Greenstein, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. “Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy” was originally published on Digitopoly on June 23, 2015.