The Empirical Economics of Online Attention

Published By: NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH on eSS | Published Date: July , 2016

This paper models and characterizes how households allocate their scarce attention in arguably the largest market for attention: the Internet. It identifies vast and expected changes in those households that allocate their attention (away from chat and news towards video and social media), and yet simultaneously identifies remarkable stability in how much attention is allocated and how it is allocated. Specifically, it identifies (i) persistence in the elasticity of attention according to income and (ii) complete stability in the dispersion of attention across sites and in the intensity of attention within sites. [Working Paper 22427]

Author(s): Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein, Jeffrey Prince | Posted on: Jul 19, 2016 | Views()


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