Media & Entertainment

Professor Hemant Bhargava's research delves into the persistent challenges posed by secondary ticket sales in public spaces, events, and sports, with an emphasis on their impact on event access, affordability, and fairness.

Netflix videos, once limited to TV access, are now available across multiple channels (mobile phones, tablets, computers). To determine the optimal approach to bundling and pricing of multi-device digital goods, we have developed an analytical modeling framework that breaks down its complexities.

Many digital platforms, in recent years, have gone under scrutiny for its addictive design that monetizes user engagement as a source of income, as well as for its extreme dissemination of harmful information. Here, we examine the extent to which platforms engage addictive mechanisms over content investment as a driver for user engagement, putting forth a health-conscious platform to analyze its viability as a feasible alternative. 

Countless companies are embracing the "XaaS" model to sell goods and value-added services. In crafting their revenue models, suppliers can opt for per-unit usage fees or per-period access charges, regularly blending the two into a two-part tariff system. To examine this, we have developed a theoretical model to analyze the economic implications of alternative designs for mixing per-unit and per-period fees.

The “creator economy” model, in which a platform organizes and distributes goods and digital content from numerous creators to millions of viewers, underlies the business model of many dominant firms today (e.g., Snap Games, Twitch, Jinri Toutiao). We have developed a theoretical model to answer questions about the functioning of such creator economies: the scale of the platform, how much supply is offered on it and how content density is distributed among creators, how the level of supply is affected by the revenue-sharing model, and what implications this has for platform design.

A new business form that is increasingly prominent, especially in platform business models, is an economic structure in which value is co-created by multiple producers and aggregated into a common bundle by a producer-consortium or independent firm. Examples include in-home video entertainment, technology goods and services, multi-sourced data platforms, and patent pools. This paper develops an economic model to study demand, production choices, revenue-sharing, and relative market power in such markets. Beyond these specific questions, it provides an architecture to rigorously answer additional questions in platform competition, market power, and effects of industrial realignment.