Chapter 1: Are There Incentives to Improve the Search Engines in the Age ofInformation Overload?Information overload on the Internet creates a natural demand for higherquality search engines. In this paper, I compare the current advertising (indirect) model of search engines financing with the hypothetical paid (direct) model. I find that under monopoly in innovation activities indirect monopolist has much lower incentives to improve the quality than the direct monopolist. Explicit modeling of entry and quality competition in a static framework leads to the conclusion that under the indirect model only one firm could profitably enter producing the minimally acceptable by consumers quality. A dynamic framework predicts more firms entry but only because the firms are colluding against consumers by saving on quality improvement investments. In contrast, under the direct model firms' cooperation leads to higher investment incentives since it permanently raises industry profit flows. I suggest several alternative policy recommendations to improve incentives in this market.Chapter 2: Strategic Control and ExclusivityThis paper extends Hagiu and Lee's (2011) "Exclusivity and control" article bymaking control regime over content in addition to exclusivity as the strategic choice in an industry characterized by a severe platform competition first for content and then for consumers. Under the assumption of homogeneous content valuations, the following results are obtained. First, for low and medium levels of content valuation, there are only affiliation equilibria (both exclusive and multihoming and the latter maximizes industry profit). For the high level of content valuation, there are one exclusive outright sale and multiple affiliation multihoming equilibria with the latter maximizing the industry profits. Finally, there are additional platforms' pessimistic expectations equilibria under affiliation regime that give higher payoffs to content providers. Implications for business strategies are presented.Chapter 3: Long Term Effects of Minimum Drinking Age Laws on Organ FailureOrgan failures are among the leading causes to deaths and the most expensive medical procedures in the United States. Medical literature has established the association between alcoholism and chronic dysfunction of organ systems. This paper provides the first causal evidence of the long-term impacts of increasing the MLDA to 21 in various states in the 1970s-1980s on reducing organ failures. By delaying exposure to alcoholic beverages, the MLDA 21 likely limits adolescents’ exposure to alcohol and reduce the likelihood of alcoholism in adulthood and thus the risk of alcohol-related diseases, including organ failures. We find that cohorts exposed to higher MLDA (=21) had lower probability of having organ failures in later life. The empirical findings show that limited access to spirits and alcohol before the age of 21 reduced the demand for transplants by 86 and 50 per 100,000 population, respectively, after ten years, given that the average transplants demanded by the cohort prior to treatment is approximately 155. These findings have important implications for evaluating the benefits of the MLDA21 legislation. Besides preventing traffic fatalities, the MLDA21 has significantly reduced organ failures in adulthood, therefore might have increased productivity and life quality of the generations who were growing up in the presence of this legislation.
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