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Superstar exclusivity in two-sided markets, joint with Leonardo Madio and Shiva Shekhar, Management Science, Vol. 70(2), February 2024, pages 991-1011
Price Signaling with Salient-thinking Consumers, joint with Andrea Mantovani and Antonio Minniti, Games and Economic Behavior, vol. 138, March 2023, pages 238-253
Technology adoption and specialized labor, joint with Marco Delogu and Giuseppe Pulina, International Economics, vol. 173, May 2023, pages 249-259
Business models for streaming platforms: content acquisition, advertising and users, joint with Dimitri Paolini, Information Economics & Policy, vol. 52(C), September 2020
Bring a friend! Privately or Publicly? joint with Paolo Pin and Simone Righi, Management Science, vol. 66(5), May 2020, pages 2269-2290
The price of discovering your needs online joint with Luca Ferrari and Simone Righi, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 164, August 2019, Pages 317-330
Poaching in media: harm to subscribers? Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Volume 27, Summer 2018, Pages 221-236. Featured article online
Behaviour-Based Price Discrimination with cross-group Externalities Journal of Economics, Volume 125, Issue 2, October 2018, Pages 137–157
Competitive Customer Poaching with Asymmetric Firms International Journal of Industrial Organization, Volume 48, September 2016, Pages 173–206
Local University Supply and Distance: A Welfare Analysis with Centralized and Decentralized Tuition Fees joint with Berardino Cesi and Dimitri Paolini Italian Economic Journal, July 2016, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp 239–252
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Does costly persuasion signal quality? joint with Luca Ferrari and Giuseppe Pignataro
(Revise and Resubmit - Second Round, International Journal of Industrial Organization)
Abstract
We study a buyer-seller setting where the seller's quality is private information and the buyer's reservation value depends on an unknown state. The seller can persuade the buyer by designing a costly Bayesian experiment. We show that a high-quality seller provides more precise information and is willing to incur higher costs, as this enables selling at higher prices. When information is costless, separation requires price distortion. By contrast, when experimentation is costly, the high-quality seller deters mimicking through a more informative experiment and sets prices optimally given the experiment design, thereby reducing the need for price distortion.
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Persuasion in Physician Agency joint with Giuseppe Pignataro and Luigi Siciliani
(submitted)
Abstract
We analyze the physician–patient agency problem in a setting where patients have heterogeneous treatment preferences and physicians choose which diagnostic test to administer. Due to imperfect test accuracy, the equilibrium features both undertreatment and overtreatment. We assess the health and welfare effects of three policy interventions: improving test accuracy, imposing a minimum accuracy standard, and mandating testing. Enhancing test accuracy can reduce both undertreatment and unnecessary care, thereby improving health outcomes and welfare under certain conditions. A minimum accuracy standard can reduce overtreatment by eliminating tests with high false-positive rates, but may also increase undertreatment if the excluded tests are valuable for identifying sick patients. The net health impact depends on the trade-off between the specificity and sensitivity of the remaining test. Mandating testing improves health outcomes for high-preference patients by avoiding unnecessary treatment, but its welfare effects are mixed, as the added testing costs yield no benefit for low-preference patients who remain untreated.
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An economic theory of sexual exchanges and human capital joint with Marina Della Giusta and Davide Dragone
(download IZA DP No. 18002 or wp 1207 DSE-Unibo)
Abstract
We develop a rational choice model of sexual exchange that unifies marriage and paid sex, explaining two key facts: the gendered segregation of sex markets and the decline in sexual activity and fertility. Individuals choose whether to engage in paid or unpaid sex based on income, human capital, and social norms. Gendered patterns emerge endogenously from the asymmetric distributions of these traits. The model also shows how the rise of digital sex reduces the cost of supplying sex, increases market participation, and reallocates time away from unpaid intimacy—leading to lower fertility even without biological constraints.
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An Economic Theory of Market Interactions within Energy Communities joint with Stefano Bolatto, Riccardo Pesci and Michele Rabasco
(submitted, download wp 1204 DSE-Unibo)
Abstract
In addition to self-production and individual disconnection from the national grid, the ongoing decentralization of the electricity market increasingly relies on energy-sharing mechanisms such as energy communities (ECs). This paper presents a parsimonious model that captures key features of the ECs, focusing on how cost and benefit allocation among community members influences net producers' energy contributions and, consequently, the total amount of energy shared within the community. The model accounts for heterogeneity among net producers in terms of residual generation capacity and distinguishes between two net consumer groups with different energy needs. It also incorporates crucial factors such as participation fees, the distribution of economic benefits among market participants, and the impact of sharing congestion externalities. The analysis shows how different sharing rules affect total energy exchange within the community and, in turn, the welfare distribution among participants.
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On the Existence of Market-Sharing Equilibria in Two-Sided Hotelling Models joint with Emanuele Bacchiega and Alessandro Fedele
(submitted)
Abstract
The Hotelling model is widely used to analyze platform competition in two-sided markets. In this setup, when platform differentiation is weak relative to cross-group benefits, tipping equilibria arise, where one platform monopolizes the market and the other is inactive. This paper shows that, alongside such equilibria, market-sharing equilibria of the kinked-demand type (Mérel and Sexton, 2010) exist. At these equilibria, platforms soften competition by replicating a collusive outcome. This finding extends the conventional understanding of the two-sided Hotelling model and offers insights for markets—particularly digital ones—where platforms operate in relatively low-differentiation environments.