Essays on Information Economy: Analysis of Social, Digital, and Mobile Platforms

Researchers and practitioners can utilize the large volume of information generated by the recent growth of online platforms to make informed and effective policy and business decisions. Although this availability of information enables innovative solutions, its abundance causes additional challenges in understanding and processing the information to make accurate inferences and predictions. My research is directed at addressing the challenges in understanding this information abundance and in developing innovative solutions to simplify decision making by practitioners. First, I identify whether online networks play a role in information diffusion and provide a framework for understanding and analyzing the data to measure diffusion. Second, I estimate the role of online social networks in job searches and the impact of the increasing number of online social connections on the job search behavior of unemployed workforce. Finally, I evaluate the role of information presented to consumers on mobile app stores as marketing signals. My research approach uses three distinct methods of identifying the economic value of information : 1) an empirical approach to dissect "big data," 2) a survey-based study in collaboration with corporations, and 3) a structural approach to understand the dynamic mobile app stores.