Legal professionals have access to many different sources of knowledge, including user-generated Wikipedia articles that summarize previous judicial decisions (i.e., precedents). While these Wikipedia articles are easily accessible, they have unknown provenance and reliability, and therefore using them in professional settings is problematic. Nevertheless, Wikipedia articles influence legal judgments, as we show using a first-of-its-kind randomized control trial on judicial decision-making. We find that the presence of a Wikipedia article about Irish Supreme Court decisions makes it meaningfully more likely that the corresponding case will be cited as a precedent by judges in subsequent decisions. The language used in the Wikipedia article also influences the language used in judgments. These effects are only present for citations by the High Court, not for the higher levels of the judiciary (Court of Appeal and Supreme Court). Since the High Court faces larger caseloads, this may indicate that settings with greater time pressures encourage greater reliance on Wikipedia. Our results add to the growing recognition that Wikipedia and other frequently accessed sources of user-generated content have profound effects on important social outcomes and that these effects extend farther than previously seen into high-stakes settings where norms are supposed to restrict their use.

The relationship between supply-side competition and platform market dynamics has long been debated, yet the specific role of supplier scale remains underexplored. In this paper, we empirically study how competition from large-scale suppliers influences platform market dynamics and, in turn, a platform's ability to compete with outside options. Using Airbnb as an example, we show that restricting large-scale suppliers yields only transient benefits to price, demand, and revenue for existing suppliers. We provide evidence that these transient gains are accompanied by a decline in average consumer experience and an increase in demand for outside options. These results suggest that the competition among small individual suppliers alone cannot maintain the quality standards necessary to rival external options, underscoring the importance of large-scale suppliers for platform sustainability in the long run. We further find that Superhost listings maintain their effort as competition weakens, but this sustained effort does not translate into greater demand or revenue, highlighting a limitation of online reputation systems. Our findings highlight the critical role that large-scale suppliers play in sustaining platform growth by enhancing consumer experience.

Balancing audience engagement and monetization is a critical challenge in the creator economy. While digital paywalls have proven effective for traditional online publishers, their applicability and effectiveness on user-generated content (UGC) platforms—where individual creators independently implement paywalls—remain unclear. This study investigates the effects of paywall adoption on audience engagement by leveraging granular data from a leading Chinese video-sharing platform. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we find that the introduction of a paywall significantly reduces overall audience engagement, even with freely accessible content solely. Further analysis reveals differential responses to paywall implementation between paid and never-paid audiences: while paid users exhibit a temporary engagement increase during their subscription period, this effect rapidly dissipates; never-paid users show a sustained decline in engagement, highlighting potential negative spillovers. However, we find that creators who differentiate paywalled content from free offerings—via longer duration or greater topic dissimilarity—can partially mitigate these negative effects. Our findings extend the digital paywall literature by shifting focus to the creator economy and audience-side impacts, providing both theoretical and practical insights for content monetization strategies in competitive UGC environments.

This paper investigates how technology adoption, specifically electronic networks, influences wages and human capital flows within firms. While prior studies have linked information technology investments to firm growth and evolving workforce composition, direct evidence on worker inflows, outflows, and wage effects remains limited. We develop a model where technology adoption raises firm productivity but also increases the costs of replacing workers due to greater specialization, incentivizing firms to reduce turnover by offering higher wages. Using a novel linkage of non-public U.S. Census Bureau microdata at the firm-state-CBSA-year level, we show that electronic network adoption is associated with higher wages (approximately 2.2%) and reduced worker outflows, with these retention effects being more pronounced among younger and high-wage workers. Contrary to expectations, our results reveal that firm expansion in this context is achieved primarily through enhanced employee retention rather than increased hiring. We further document heterogeneity in adoption effects by local labor market conditions and worker characteristics. Our findings imply an important role for replacement costs and wage incentives in shaping human capital dynamics following information technology adoption.