iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

We hope this paper offers policymakers important guidance about the winners and losers from privacy regulation and how it interacts w/ multiproduct monopoly. Big lesson: focus on ways to protect poorer consumers' privacy specifically!

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Last: what if consumers don't like their data being *used* for ads? We show that this can lead to the poorest & wealthiest consumers being made better off, but the lower-middle class is harmed.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Second: what if consumers intrinsically value privacy? Doesn't change their choices, but privacy regulation shifts everybody's preferences upward. If the wealthy value their privacy more than the poor, then privacy policy becomes even more regressive (but obviously good for CS)

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

We explore 3 extensions. First: what if wealthy eyeballs are more valuable than poor ones to advertisers? Turns out everything goes through *if* wealthy eyeball profitability is most impacted by privacy regulation.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Who gains? Inframarginal premium consumers (wealthy) who pay lower p. Who loses? Inframarginal free consumers (poor) who face higher a. Distributionally bad! We show this using my (Leisten 2024) "inequality-adjusted consumer surplus"

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Privacy regulation worsens targeting, lowers advertiser WTP, and induces the platform to *shift* users from ad-supported to premium by raising a & lowering p (This is only true in a "full coverage separating equilibrium" which we define and provide conditions for in the paper)

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

We build a simple model: - Poorer consumers have lower (higher) marginal aversion to ads (spending money) - Monopoly freemium platform chooses ad load (a) and premium price (p) - Profits are premium revenue plus ad-revenue, which is per-eyeball advertiser WTP * number of eyeballs

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Freemium: a free ad-supported version and a paid ad-free version, is everywhere these days. Youtube, Spotify, Netflix, etc. Why offer the ad-supported version? You can get price-sensitive (poorer) customers but still monetize their attention

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

#EconSky 🚨NEW PAPER with Ben Casner: We present a theory of why privacy regulation can be distributionally bad when platforms offer freemium models

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Never figured you to be an MMT guy but ok

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

#EconSky My first publication is looking like it might be a good one!

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

What people think I'm doing when I say I'm "working on my egg paper" vs what I'm actually doing

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

"We thank the anonymous referees for their constructive feedback. In addressing their comments, we feel we have significantly improved the soup"

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

#EconSky Note: my online seminar on "Open(?) AI" has been **rescheduled** to Jan 27 because of the holiday. Thread describing the paper below! bsky.app/profile/leis...

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Reposted by Matthew Leisten

Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

📉📈 I'm giving a (virtual) talk on "Open(?) AI" hosted by BU Questrom next month! Details/registration at the link, description of the paper below! www.bu.edu/dbi/events/o... bsky.app/profile/did:...

bu.edu

Online Research Seminar on Digital Businesses | Digital Business Institute

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

bu.edu

Online Research Seminar on Digital Businesses | Digital Business Institute

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

Made my schedule for #ASSA2025! Fully expecting to be able to attend all these sessions by bending time and logic to my will

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

#EconSky I'll be at ASSAs next week! Feel free to hit me up if you want to drink coffee and chat research, and be sure to check out this exciting, inter-field session I organized:

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Reposted by Matthew Leisten

ASSA Annual Meeting @assameeting.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Don't forget to register for the #ASSA2025 Annual Meeting in San Francisco! Early bird registration ends tomorrow, Dec. 3. Register now! #econsky aeaweb.org/conference/

aeaweb.org

ASSA 2025 Annual Meeting

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

My dad died while I was on the market (albeit during flyout season). Submit applications to anyplace that still allows submissions (even if the deadline has nominally passed). Then reach out to your advisor. Your committee may be able to make some calls to explain your circumstances. Good luck!

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

If we are talking about this paper, then yes omg what a tour de force

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Yeah, I'm all for better frameworks! I'm also sympathetic to everyone who takes a sigh of relief when someone agrees that the market they're studying is plausibly not two-sided

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

I'm mostly joking, but, ya know...

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Saw the paper and have to read it! The first thought that occurs to me is about distribution and not efficiency: do we accept market power as a transfer of surplus from consumers to producers of a negative externality even if it corrects a DWL?

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Two sided markets are hairier. We have some lessons about them, but it has served to muck up claims of scale efficiencies, market definition (an economically problematic exercise anyway), and so on. Possibly a bigger impact on marketing/business practices than on policy?

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Auctions are a great example of where applied IO theory, and maybe some empirics, has had an immediate impact. "Economist as engineer"/Milgrom stuff.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

One thing is that the New Empirical IO stuff has been great at adding rigor to non-IO fields, e.g. education, labor, urban, general market design...but it isn't all that useful in the antitrus courtroom. Like, maybe BLP if the case is big, but usually logit + applied theory + calibration happens

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Ok but hear me out what if the no-cartel counterfactual is merger

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

I'll start by saying the beauty--and entire premise-- of IO is that no two markets are alike. Otherwise just do CES/macro stuff. So naturally our best answers are narrow. I like the trend towards long term industry studies (e.g. Grieco et al on autos, Miller et al. on cement) for this reason.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

*self promotion siren 🚨 * bsky.app/profile/leis...

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

#econsky What is, in your opinion, the biggest question IO has credibly settled? Seems most of our contributions are either (a) fancy methods; (b) negative results (e.g. don't regress price on HHI); (c) narrow in scope (yogurts, etc); or (d) contested (have markups actually risen?)

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

There were other talks that I missed too! Long and short of it is I'm constantly impressed by the quality and quantity of output by my colleagues!

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Eddie Watkins and Matt Panhans presented two different papers, both allowing greater model flexibility in vertical mergers. Eddie focuses on the nesting structure of demand, while Matt focuses on timing assumptions amd nonlinear pricing.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Devesh Raval, Frank Pinter, and Dan Hosken analyzed Yelp reviews of supermarkets to show that consumers complained more after Safeway/Kroger divested stores to Haggen

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Ben Casner showed that anti-steering clauses (i.e. mandating Apple allow 3P transactions) may incentivize Apple to allow some "bad" apps into the app store to strengthen Apple Pay's value as an insured transaction

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

(I presented my Open(?) AI paper. You can read about it elswehwere on here)

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Austin Drukker presented work quantifying the value of air routes between small cities, and the distortions induced by the subsidies to keep these routes served. "Drive to a nearby bigger city to fly from there" is importantly in the choice set.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Matthew Thomas showed that you can design a contest to extract the first-best surplus even if the contest (1) must be non-discriminatory and (2) is bound by limited liability constrains. (More micro theory than IO, but I'll count it)

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Andrew Kearns and Kimberly Conlon estimate a dynamic model of fiber upgrading in Texas. They aim to quantify the effect of competitive pressure on quality upgrades

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Just finished SouthernEconJ meetings. There were, by my count, ten IO papers presented written or co-written by FTC economists 💪 A few of them 👇

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

8. You can't do everything, so don't take on "extracurriculars" at work unless they are complementary to research (or they're deeply fulfilling). I co-organize the FTC seminar, which is a great extracurricular because it keeps me in touch with research even more

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

7. Always be going to conferences. They're a great way to keep up with research. But most imporantly: non-academics rarely get invited to give seminars, so this is where we grt to show our stuff, network, etc.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

6. Juggle effectively. For me, that means having one or two papers under review at all times, clearing up my desk for other projects.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

5. Know your agency's advantages. Depending on where you work, you may have access to specific data or institutional knowledge that others may envy. Then advertise it relentlessly: in papers, to prospective coauthors, etc.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

4. Attack your policy work with an open mind. If you think about your work in creative ways, novel research ideas may follow.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

3. Have coauthors, especially academic ones. They can take the pen when you're busy.

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Matthew Leisten @leistenecon.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

2. Put in some sweat equity at the start. If management notices you're productive at research, they may give you more research time. So burn the candle at both ends in your first year to demonstrate this.

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