@article{Controversial:4028,
      recid = {4028},
      author = {Jimenez Duran, Rafael Josymar},
      title = {Essays on the Economics of Controversial Policies},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2022-06},
      pages = {257},
      abstract = {This dissertation contains essays of the underlying  economics of three controversial policies. 

The first  paper addresses the practice of social media platforms of  banning users and removing posts to moderate their content.  This "speech policing" remains controversial because little  is known about its consequences and the costs and benefits  for different individuals. I conduct two field experiments  on Twitter to examine the effect of moderating hate speech  on user behavior and welfare. Randomly reporting posts for  violating the rules against hateful conduct increases the  likelihood that Twitter removes them. Reporting does not  affect the activity on the platform of the posts' authors  or their likelihood of reposting hate, but it does increase  the activity of those attacked by the posts. These results  are consistent with a model in which content moderation is  a quality decision for platforms that increases user  engagement and hence advertising revenue. The second  experiment shows that changing users' perceived content  removal does not change their willingness to pause using  social media, a measure of consumer surplus. My results  imply that content moderation does not necessarily moderate  users, but it marginally increases advertising revenue. It  can be consistent with both profit- and  welfare-maximization if out-of-platform externalities are  small.

In the second paper, coauthored with Justin Holz  and Eduardo Laguna, we study anti-price gouging laws in the  US. Thirty-four states prohibit price increases during  emergencies and many individuals take costly actions to  report violators.  We use an experiment to measure the  willingness to pay to report sellers who increase prices of  personal protective equipment. Over 75% of subjects pay to  report even if others are willing to purchase at those  prices. The willingness to pay is polarized and increases  with price. We argue that reports contain information about  a desire to prevent third-party transactions at illegal  prices. The mechanism driving reports varies by good: we  find a distaste for profits for hand sanitizers but not for  face masks.

In the third paper, coauthored with Fernando  Álvarez, David Argente, and Francesco Lippi (now published  in Alvarez et al. (2022)), we study the possibility of  banning cash payments in Mexico. We use two quasi-natural  experiments that encouraged the use of debit cards and  facilitated the use of ATMs in Mexico to estimate the  elasticity of crime and informality to the availability of  cash as a means of payment. We then construct a simple  model to quantify the private costs of restricting cash  usage in the economy. Our model captures the degree of  substitution between cash and other payment methods at the  intensive and extensive margins. We estimate the welfare  effects of restricting cash by means of three key inputs:  i) the elasticity of substitution between cash and credit,  ii) the share of expenditures in cash by type of good  obtained from detailed micro data, and iii) the elasticity  of crimes to the availability of cash as means of payment.  The social benefits of restricting cash usage are driven by  the reduction of some criminal activities. The costs arise  from the distortions that the anti-cash regulation imposes  on the individual choices regarding the means of payment.  We find that the private costs of heavily taxing the use of  cash in Mexico outweigh the social benefits that we  identify.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/4028},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.4028},
}