Associate Professor of Digitization, Innovation and Intellectual Property
HEC Lausanne (Faculty of Business and Economics at University of Lausanne)
PI @ Digital Markets Lab
I am interested in how digitization affects consumers, firms and markets, and how this shapes incentives to innovate. My research spans topics such as Intellectual Property and Economics of Data and Artificial Intelligence.
I teach strategy, innovation, applied econometrics and data science.
I am part of the Digital Economy Network and the Data Economy Project.
Email - Google Scholar - SSRN - ORCID - Linkedin - Twitter - YouTube - GitHub
Publications
Beefing IT up for your Investor? Open Sourcing and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub (with Annamaria Conti and Maria Roche), conditionally accepted at Organization Science. Best Paper Award at Strategy Science Conference. Last working paper version.
Open at the Core: Moving from Proprietary Technology to Building a Product on Open Source Software (with Jérémie Haese), forthcoming in Management Science. Last working paper version.
The Editor and the Algorithm: Recommendation Technology in Online News (2024, with Ananya Sen and Jörg Claussen). Management Science, 70(9), 5816-5831. Last working paper version. Best Paper Award at WISE.
The Economics of Copyright in the Digital Age (2024, with Margaritha Windisch), forthcoming in Journal of Economic Surveys. Last working paper version. Article on ProMarket.
The Welfare Effects of Mobile Internet Access: Evidence from Roam-Like-At-Home (2024, with Martin Quinn and Miguel Godinho de Matos). The Economic Journal, 134(659), 1228–1246. Last working paper version.
Copyright Levies and Cloud Storage: Ex-ante Policy Evaluation with a Field Experiment (2024). Research Policy, 53(2), 104918.
Batman Forever? The Role of Trademarks for Reuse in the US Comics Industry (2023, with Alexander Cuntz and Franziska Kaiser). Research Policy, 52(8), 104820. Last working paper version.
Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR (2022, with Stefan Bechtold, Michail Batikas and Tobias Kretschmer). Marketing Science, 41(4), 318-340. Last working paper version, short presentation. VoxEU Article.
Digitization, Prediction and Market Efficiency: Evidence from Book Publishing Deals (2022, with Imke Reimers). Management Science, 68(9), 6355-7064. Last working paper version. Publishers Weekly Article.
Video Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Recorded Music Sales (2020, with Tobias Kretschmer). Information Systems Research, 31(3), 776–800. Last working paper version. VoxEU Article.
Social Networks and the Demand for News (2019, with Lisa M. George). Information Economics and Policy, 49, 100833. Last working paper version.
Follow the Money: Online Piracy and Self-Regulation in the Advertising Industry (2019, with Michail Batikas and Jörg Claussen), International Journal of Industrial Organization, 65, 121-151. Last working paper version.
The Next Wave of Digital Technological Change and the Cultural Industries (2019), Journal of Cultural Economics, 43(2), 189–210. Last working paper version. Write-up for CulturalEconomics.org.
Determinants and Heterogeneity of Switching Costs in IT Outsourcing: Estimates from Firm-Level Data (2019), European Journal of Information Systems, 28(3), 291-317. Last working paper version.
Demand Variation, Strategic Flexibility and Market Entry: Evidence from the U.S. Airline Industry (2018, with Jörg Claussen and Christian Essling), Strategic Management Journal, 39(11), 2877-2898. Last working paper version.
Catch Me if You Can: Effectiveness and Consequences of Online Copyright Enforcement (2018, with Luis Aguiar and Jörg Claussen), Information Systems Research, 29(3), 656-678. Last working paper version.
Competition for Attention in the Digital Age: The Case of Single Releases in the Recorded Music Industry (2017, with Christian Essling and Johannes Koenen), Information Economics and Policy, 40, 26-40. Last working paper version.
Piracy and Box Office Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload (2017, with Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer), International Journal of Industrial Organization, 52, 188-215. Last working paper version.
R&D Outsourcing and Intellectual Property Infringement (2015, with Philipp Buss), Research Policy, 44(4), 977-989. Last working paper version (including online appendix).
Work in progress or under review
Contractual and Statutory Access to Training Data and the Dynamics of Innovation in AI
Returns to Data: Evidence from Web Tracking (with Luis Aguiar, Tomaso Duso, Jonas Hanane and Hannes Ullrich), also here
Strategic Behavior and Artificial Intelligence Training Data (with Florian Abeillon, Franziska Kaiser, Jérémie Haese and Alexander Staub), also on arXiv. Best Paper Award at INFORMS Annual Meeting 2024, Information Systems Cluster
Who Benefits from Robots and AI? Project-level Evidence on Labor Demand, Operations and Profitability (with Erdem Dogukan Yilmaz)
Get Rich or Die Tryin': Concerts and the Digitization of Recorded Music (with Franziska Kaiser)
The Shrinking Shelf? DMA, DSA, and Amazon Marketplace (with Sverrir Arnorsson, Stefan Bechtold, Reinhold Kesler, Filippo Lancieri and Amit Zac)
Technology and Market Strategy in High-Tech Organizations (with Anthi Kiouka), nominated for Best Paper Prize and Responsible Research Paper Prize at SMS Annual Conference 2023.
How to Seed a Platform? Overcoming the Chicken-and-Egg Problem with Owned, Earned and Paid Media (with Tobias Kretschmer)
The Returns to Targeting: Evidence from a Field Experiment (with Pedro Ferreira, Miguel Godinho de Matos and Martin Quinn)
Other publications
Copyright and the Dynamics of Innovation in AI (2025), Proceedings of HICSS-58.
Reproducibility in Management Science (2024, with Fišar, M., et al. as a member of the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration). Management Science, 70(3), 1343-1356. Last working paper version.
The Risks of Risk-Based AI Regulation: Taking Liability Seriously (2023, with Martin Kretschmer, Tobias Kretschmer and Alexander Peukert), also on SSRN and covered in VoxEU, Verfassungsblog and CREATe
Implementing Digital Responsibility through Information Systems Research – A Delphi Study of Objectives, Activities, and Challenges in IS Research (2023, with Daniel Beverungen et al.), Wirtschaftsinformatik 23 Conference.
Daten als Wettbewerbsvorteil: Regulierer und Wettbewerbsbehörden sollten aufmerksam bleiben (2023, with Luis Aguiar, Jonas Hanane, Tomaso Duso and Hannes Ullrich). DIW Wochenbericht, 90(27), pp.366-373.
Facebook Shadow Profiles (2022, with Luis Aguiar, Maximilian Schaefer and Hannes Ullrich)
Plattformen wie Facebook können mehr als die Hälfte der Internetaktivität beobachten (2022, with Luis Aguiar, Maximilian Schaefer and Hannes Ullrich) DIW Wochenbericht, 89(29/30), pp.400-406.
Twin study reveals non-heritable immune perturbations in multiple sclerosis (2022, with Florian Ingelfinger et al.). Nature, 603, 152-158.
Flexible Digital Supply Behavior (2019), in S. Cameron (Ed.), A Research Agenda for Cultural Economics, Chapter 4, 63-86, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
External Technology Supply and Client-Side Innovation (2012), in D. Audretsch, E. Lehmann, A. Link, A. Starnecker (Eds.), Technology Transfer in a Global Economy, 161-184, Springer, New York. Last working paper version.
Examples of media coverage
General commentary
RTS 1930 (national TV news in Switzerland)
Facebook Shadow Profiles
Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR
Digitization, Prediction and Market Efficiency: Evidence from Book Publishing Deals
The Editor vs. the Algorithm: Targeting, Data and Externalities in Online News
Follow the Money: Online Piracy and Self-Regulation in the Advertising Industry
Catch Me if You Can: Effectiveness and Consequences of Online Copyright Enforcement
Video Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Recorded Music Sales
Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload