Contact Information:

H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management
and
Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University
4800 Forbes Avenue, HBH 2105D
Pittsburgh PA, 15217
Email: em
Voice: 412-268-5978
Fax: 412-268-5338
Office: Hamburg Hall 2105D
Assistant: Gretchen Hunter (Hamburg Hall 2101,
412-268-6076)


New:
  • September-09: I was on a panel at the Heinz College’s orientation talking about my research. You can access the video here. I am in the first panel, “Digital and Social Media.”

  • June-09: Rahul Telang and I were featured on a Harvard Berkman Center podcast, talking about our research on interaction between digital and physical distribution channels.

  • May-09: I’ve been selected by our Masters of Information Systems Management students (thanks everyone!) to give the faculty address at commencement.

  • April-09: Here is a new paper analyzing the impact of NBC’s decision to remove their content from iTunes on demand for their content through piracy and DVD channels. Using piracy on ABC, CBS, and FOX content as a control, we find that NBC’s removal from iTunes led to an 11.5% increase in piracy on their content. On a unit basis, this increase was more than twice as large as the daily sales NBC received through iTunes before removal. Moreover, we see no increase in DVD sales for NBC’s television box sets after removal.

  • March-09: This paper has been accepted for publication at Information Systems Research. The paper looks at how the importance of network effects might change in the context of purely digital goods that can be easily converted from one format to another. We develop a model of sequential duopoly competition and proprietary technology standards. We find that unless network effects are very large, firms will provide converters to all consumers. This makes both the entrant and incumbent better off since the provision of converters alleviates price competition in the market.

  • February-09: Here is an updated version of a paper that looks at the impact of increased broadband Internet penetration on DVD sales. Studios have been concerned that the dominant impact of increased broadband penetration would be increased piracy and lower DVD sales. We use local (DMA) level data to show that, in contrast to these concerns, increased broadband penetration is correlated with increased DVD sales.

  • January-09: This paper has been conditionally accepted at Quantitative Marketing and Economics. The paper analyzes search costs among users of an Internet shopbot. This paper finds that shopbot users face relatively high costs associated with searching and processing information displayed on the site.

  • November-08: Here is an updated version of a paper that uses a hierarchical Bayesian model to analyze the impact of position on profitability within sponsored search results at Google. We find that while the first position within sponsored search results generates the highest click-throughs, it is not necessarily the most profitable position. We use an analytic model to argue that this could be because of heterogeneity in search costs across consumers and the additional browsing cost incurred in evaluating products across multiple websites.

  • November-08: Some of my research on Internet marketing and pricing was quoted in this press story on the impact of the supreme court’s decision on manufacturers ability to impose minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policies on online retailers.