Competition and Defaults in Online Search

Francesco Decarolis, Muxin Li () and Filippo Paternollo

No 17779, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper offers the first systematic quantitative assessment of default-option interventions designed to mitigate Google's search dominance. By analyzing interventions in the European Economic Area, Russia, and Turkey, we find that, across all three cases, changes to default settings effectively reduced Google's market share. The causal impact amounts to less than 1 percentage point in the EEA and over 10 percentage points in Russia and Turkey. Differences arise from intervention nuances, including the size of the targeted users' group, local market characteristics, and remedy designs. We discuss the complexity of assessing the interventions' impact on welfare deriving from quality responses.

Date: 2023-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17779 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17779

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17779

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().