All

Posted on

The Effect of Editorial Discretion Book Promotion on Sales at Amazon.com

Edelman, Benjamin. “The Effect of Editorial Discretion Book Promotion on Sales at Amazon.com.” 2002. (Winner of Seymour E. and Ruth B. Harris Prize for outstanding senior honors thesis in economics. Winner of Thomas T. Hoopes Prize awarded for outstanding scholarly work or research.)

A new dataset collected by the author allows estimation of the effect on book sales of promotional listing on Amazon’s editorial discretion pages. Following Goolsbee and Chevalier (2001), sales quantities are inferred from sales rank data freely available on Amazon’s web site, and an automated system tracks which books are promoted when, where, and how often. The results indicate that promotion of books on editorial discretion pages within Amazon’s web site yields increases in sales, and more frequent promotion of a book is associated with larger increases in sales. Increases in sales are greatest for newly-released hardcover books; increases are larger for childrens’ books, books in stock, and books more favorably priced at Amazon than at its foremost competitor, Barnes & Noble. Increases in sales are larger during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas than before or after the holiday season, and promotion has a larger effect when editorial discretion pages feature only a few books than when they feature many. Finally, the average short-run effect of promotion on one of Amazon’s editorial discretion pages is found to be roughly one third as large as the effect of an appearance in the New York Times Book Review, and the annual sum of Amazon’s editorial discretion promotional activities shows a total short-run impact on sales roughly three fifths as large as the totality of annual Times book reviews.

Posted on

Expert Report and Appendices for Multnomah County Public Library et al., vs. United States of America, et al.

I had the honor of testifying, in writing and orally, in Multnomah County Public Library et al., vs. United States of America, et al., an ACLU challenge to the Children’s Internet Protection Act. My expert report, rebuttal report, and supplemental report include documentation of specific pages wrongly blocked by adult filters.

See also my oral testimony including the United States’ attempt to prevent me from being qualified as an expert.

Posted on

Domains Reregistered for Distribution of Unrelated Content: A Case Study of “Tina’s Free Live Webcam”

Domains Reregistered for Distribution of Unrelated Content: A Case Study of “Tina’s Free Live Webcam”. (March – April 2002.)

In recent years, many Internet users have become aware that when domain names expire (after their original registrants forget, fail, or otherwise decline to renew them), the domain names may be reregistered by others. This feature of the management of the domain name system might be thought to be desirable since it allows and facilitates a turnover of names from those uninterested in using them to those who in fact do seek to put them to active use. But recent experience shows that this structure also allows domains to be renewed by firms who do not seem to seek to use the domains to offer original content but rather seem to hope to profit from the prior promotional works of others.

In particular, such firms often offer pornographic or sexually-explicit images, advertising, or links or redirects to other commercial sites. The apparent expectation of such firms is that at least some users will request the web pages previously (before domain expiration) hosting other content; any such users will instead be shown this new content, likely creating profits for the firms that reregistered the expired domain names.

In this article, I document several thousand domains reregistered by one particular firm — many domain names that all redirect users to one particular web page displaying sexually explicit images. While this research is by no means exhaustive — other firms are likely conducting similar registration practices, and still others make numerous registrations and reregistrations that no doubt differ in various ways — a review of these specific registrations as well as their general characteristics may be helpful in understanding the behavior at issue.

 

Posted on

Shortcomings and Challenges in the Restriction of Internet Retransmissions of Over-the-Air Television Content to Canadian Internet Users

My expert memorandum Shortcomings and Challenges in the Restriction of Internet Retransmissions of Over-the-Air Television Content to Canadian Internet Users was attached to the National Association of Broadcasters’ submission to Industry Canada in its 2001 evaluation of retransmission of commercial television content over the Internet.