Competition in the Digital Age
If someone had said that I would be writing a blog post to consider a law that might imprison people for conducting statistical analysis on publicly available data, I would have thought that was unlikely because who would ever propose, let alone enact, such a law? The other day we got our answer: France! The …
Continue reading "The unintended consequences of France’s ban on statistical analysis of Judges"
Probably not. In the New Yorker, Tim Wu argues for yes. His argument is simple. Facebook make money because they collect data that their users freely give them. For the most valuable innovation at the heart of Facebook was probably not the social network (Friendster thought of that) so much as the creation of a …
In a fascinating blog post, Adam Ozimek makes the case that we will see much more individualized pricing (which economists call "first degree price discrimination") as more data mining becomes available. For instance, in a new working paper, Ben Shiller is able to use big data to massively improve his ability to predict demand for Netflix subscriptions by any given individual: …
Continue reading "Will Big Data Create a Personalized Pricing Nirvana for Retailers?"
I was at a conference early this week hosted by the Technology Policy Institute. One of the keynote address was by the Chair of the FTC where she talked about big data and privacy. It struck me in listing to the speech that there was insufficient attention being paid as to what might be effective …
I teach at a School of Management so you won’t be surprised to learn that I think good management can make a huge difference in the performance of companies, and ultimately the economy. But you may be surprised that there is very little economic research on the effects of management. Sure, there’s lots of speculation and countless …
Continue reading "The State of Performance-driven Management in America"
Digitopoly 