Essays in Information Economics.

Abstract

I study two economic responses to the challenges of copyright infringements and spam brought about by the birth of the Internet. These responses are anti-spam mechanisms and open contents. I derive conditions under which distribution and care level taken to avoid damages in open contents are socially efficient or inefficient. Then I report experimental results on the production of open contents. I compare free-riding, efficiency and spillover when there are large or small teams using non-modular or modular production. Lastly, I propose and evaluate an anti-spam mechanism called uncensored communication channel, which aims to entice spam-demanders and spam-suppliers to trade in there instead of the traditional email channels.