Economics of digitization.

• Position: Conferences - Conference news - Brief article

An NBER Conference on the "Economics of Digitization" took place in Palo Alto on March 4. Research Associates Shane Greenstein of Northwestern University, Josh Lerner of Harvard University, and Scott Stern of MIT organized the program. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

* Garrett A. Johnson, University of Rochester; Randall A. Lewis, Netflix; and Elmar I. Nubbemeyer, Google, "Ghost Ads: Improving the Economics of Measuring Ad Effectiveness"

* Timothy F. Bresnahan, Stanford University and NBER, and Xing Li and Pai-Ling Yin, Stanford University, "Paying Incumbents and Customers to Enter an Industry: Buying Downloads"

* Alexander White, Tsinghua University, and Glen Weyl, Microsoft Research New England, "Insulated Platform Competition"

* Leonard Nakamura, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Rachel Soloveichik, Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Capturing the Productivity Impact of the 'Free' Apps and Other Online Media"

* Bo Cowgill, Columbia...