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Working Paper
Valuing “free” media across countries in GDP
?Free? consumer entertainment and information from the Internet, largely supported by advertising revenues, has had a major impact on consumer behavior. Some economists believe that measured gross domestic product (GDP) growth since 2000 is too low because it excludes online entertainment (Brynjolfsson and Oh 2012; Ito 2013). Similar large effects on consumers occurred with the arrival of free radio and television entertainment. We provide an experimental methodology that uses previously established GDP measurement procedures to value advertising-supported entertainment around the world. The ...
Working Paper
The Expansion of Varieties in the New Age of Advertising
The last decades have seen large improvements in digital advertising technology that allowed firms to better target specific consumer tastes. This research studies the relationship among digital advertising, the rise of varieties, and economic welfare. We develop a model of advertising and varieties where firms choose the intensity of digital ads directed at specific consumers as well as traditional ads that are undirected. The calibrated model shows that improvements in digital advertising have driven the rise in varieties over time. Empirical evidence is presented using detailed micro data ...
Working Paper
Valuing \"Free\" Media in GDP: An Experimental Approach
?Free? consumer entertainment and information from the Internet, largely supported by advertising revenues, has had a major impact on consumer behavior. Some economists believe that measured gross domestic product (GDP) growth is badly underestimated because GDP excludes online entertainment (Brynjolfsson and Oh 2012; Ito 2013; Aeppel 2015). This paper ntroduces an experimental GDP methodology that includes advertising-supported media in both final output and business inputs. For example, Google Maps would be counted as final output when it is used by a consumer to plan vacation driving ...
Working Paper
Consumer Mistakes and Advertising : The Case of Mortgage Refinancing
Does advertising help consumers to find the products they need or push them to buy products they don't need? In this paper, we study the effects of advertising on consumer mistakes and quantify the resulting effect on consumer welfare in the market for mortgage refinancing. Mortgage borrowers frequently make costly refinancing mistakes by either refinancing when they should wait, or by waiting when they should refinance. We assemble a novel data set that combines a borrower's exposure to direct mail refinance advertising and their subsequent refinancing decisions. Even though on average ...
Working Paper
Measuring the “Free” Digital Economy Within the GDP and Productivity Accounts
We develop an experimental methodology that values ?free? digital content through the lens of a production account and is consistent with the framework of the national accounts. We build upon the work in Nakamura, et al. (2016) by combining marketing- and advertising-supported content and find that the impact of ?free? digital content on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) has accelerated in recent years, particularly since 2005. However, the explosion in ?free? digital content is partially offset by a decrease in ?free? print content like newspapers. Including these, real GDP growth would grow ...
Working Paper
Bankruptcy Lawyers and Credit Recovery
The author studies how bankruptcy law firm advertisements affect credit recovery of households in financial distress. Exploiting the border discontinuity strategy associated with the geographic unit in which local TV advertisements are sold, the author empirically uncovers bankruptcy filings and credit recovery related to exogenous variations in bankruptcy law firm advertisements. The author first documents a significant advertising effect on filing rates and shows that advertising-induced filers are similar to existing filers. The author then finds a positive effect of advertisements on ...