research
research
Working papers
Excessive Content Moderation
NET Institute Working paper
Unregulated online platforms often host extreme and socially undesirable content. As mainstream platforms tighten moderation, some users shift to unmoderated alternatives, leading to a leakage of extreme content. I develop a duopoly model where an ad-funded mainstream platform competes with an unmoderated fringe. Heterogeneous users choose platforms and create content reflecting their views. The mainstream platform trades off attracting fringe users with making content safer for advertisers. With strong network effects, the socially optimal moderation is more lenient than the profit-maximizing one. Therefore, regulation mandating stricter moderation may backfire by increasing overall content unsafety.
Presented at 2025 TILEC - Economic Governance of Social Media, 2025 EARIE, U. Autónoma de Barcelona Microlab Workshop, 2025 Economics of Digitization Workshop, U. Pablo de Olavide seminar, EU Commision's JRC Workshop, 2024 Jornadas de Economía Industrial, 2024 Spanish Association of Law and Economics Meeting, 2024 ENTER (Brussels)
Work in progress
Mergers in the Sectoral Network
Sectors occupy different positions in the production network: some have strong linkages to other sectors as buyers or suppliers, while others are more peripheral. Yet neither the antitrust literature nor competition authorities have considered whether these linkages affect the impact of mergers. I develop a theoretical model showing that the efficiency required for a merger to be consumer surplus neutral depends on the merging sector’s network linkages. I decompose merger effects into market power and efficiency pass-through, and calibrate the model to the U.S. economy to identify the sectors where mergers are predicted to be most and least anticompetitive.
Presented at 2025 Spanish Association of Law and Economics Meeting, 2025 Jornadas de Economía Industrial