IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eag/rereps/32.html

`You Will:' A Macroeconomic Analysis of Digital Advertising

Author

Abstract

An information-based model is developed where traditional and digital advertising finance the provision of free media goods and affect price competition. Digital advertising is directed toward consumers while traditional advertising is undirected. The equilibrium is suboptimal. Media goods are under provided with both types of advertising. Additionally, traditional advertising is excessive because it is undirected. The tax-cum-subsidy policy that overcomes these inefficiencies is characterized. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy. Digital advertising increases welfare significantly and is disproportionately financed by better-off consumers. The welfare gain from the optimal policy is much smaller than the one realized by the introduction of digital advertising. In Review of Economic Studies (2024).

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Greenwood & Yueyuan Ma & Mehmet Yorukoglu, 2020. "`You Will:' A Macroeconomic Analysis of Digital Advertising," Economie d'Avant Garde Research Reports 32, Economie d'Avant Garde.
    • Handle: RePEc:eag:rereps:32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/papers/gmy.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: None
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S. A. Ozga, 1960. "Imperfect Markets Through Lack of Knowledge," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 74(1), pages 29-52.
    2. Austan Goolsbee & Peter J. Klenow, 2006. "Valuing Consumer Products by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 108-113, May.
    3. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2007. "Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 969-1006.
    4. Jeremy Greenwood & Karen A. Kopecky, 2013. "Measuring The Welfare Gain From Personal Computers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 336-347, January.
    5. Dinlersoz, Emin M. & Yorukoglu, Mehmet, 2008. "Informative advertising by heterogeneous firms," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 168-191, June.
    6. Susanto Basu, 2019. "Are Price-Cost Markups Rising in the United States? A Discussion of the Evidence," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    7. Marshall, Alfred, 1920. "Industry and Trade," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, edition 3, number marshall1920.
    8. Gerard R. Butters, 1977. "Equilibrium Distributions of Sales and Advertising Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 465-491.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Salome Baslandze & Jeremy Greenwood & Ricardo Marto & Sara Moreira, 2023. "The Expansion of Varieties in the New Age of Advertising," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 50, pages 171-210, October.
    3. Kim, Gueyon, 2022. "Trade-Induced Adoption of New Work," IZA Discussion Papers 15165, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mathilde Aubouin & Lionel Ragot, 2024. "The Macroeconomics of Free Digital Services," Working Papers hal-04616676, HAL.
    2. Hersh, Jonathan & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2022. "Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the welfare gains from global trade after 1492," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    3. Serafin Grundl & You Suk Kim, 2019. "Consumer mistakes and advertising: The case of mortgage refinancing," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 161-213, June.
    4. Costas Arkolakis, 2010. "Market Penetration Costs and the New Consumers Margin in International Trade," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(6), pages 1151-1199.
    5. Hartmut Egger & Josef Falkinger, 2016. "Limited Consumer Attention in International Trade," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(5), pages 1096-1128, November.
    6. Emin Dinlersoz & Nathan Goldschlag & Mehmet Yorukoglu & Nikolas Zolas, 2023. "On The Role of Trademarks: From Micro Evidence to Macro Outcomes," Working Papers 23-16, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Diane Coyle & Leonard Nakamura, 2022. "Time Use, Productivity, and Household-centric Measurement of Welfare in the Digital Economy," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 42, pages 165-186, Spring.
    8. Ian Goldin & Pantelis Koutroumpis & François Lafond & Julian Winkler, 2024. "Why Is Productivity Slowing Down?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 196-268, March.
    9. Walid Hadhri & Mohamed Ayadi & Adel Ben Youssef, 2012. "Difference between Adoption and Access Frequency to Internet and Consumer Surplus," Post-Print halshs-00937177, HAL.
    10. Fan, Haichao & Lai, Edwin L.-C. & Li, Yao Amber, 2015. "Credit constraints, quality, and export prices: Theory and evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 390-416.
    11. Diane Coyle & Leonard I. Nakamura, 2019. "Toward a Framework for Time Use, Welfare, and Household Centric Economic Measurement," Working Papers 19-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    12. Lei Fang & Anne Hannusch & Pedro Silos, 2019. "Back to Becker: Producing Consumption with Time and Goods," 2019 Meeting Papers 1386, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Smaranda Pantea & Bertin Martens, 2014. "The Value of the Internet for Consumers," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2014-08, Joint Research Centre.
    14. Bridgman, Benjamin, 2022. "Is Productivity On Vacation? The Impact Of The Digital Economy On The Value Of Leisure," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(1), pages 127-148, January.
    15. Robert DeYoung & Evren Ors, 2004. "Advertising and pricing at multiple-output firms: evidence from U.S. thrift institutions," Working Paper Series WP-04-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    16. Benjamin Bridgman, 2016. "Engines of Leisure," BEA Working Papers 0137, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    17. Josef Falkinger, 2008. "A welfare analysis of "junk" information and spam filters," SOI - Working Papers 0811, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    18. Whelan Adele, 2019. "Entry Deterrence, Coordinating Advertising and Pricing in Markets with Consumption Externalities," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-16, June.
    19. Erik Brynjolfsson & Seon Tae Kim & Joo Hee Oh, 2024. "The Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Goods on the Internet," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 978-991, September.
    20. John Creedy, 2022. "Measuring the Welfare Gain from a New Good: An Introduction," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 55(3), pages 417-425, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eag:rereps:32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jeremy Greenwood (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/EAG.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.