This thesis consists of three papers in applied microeconomics theory.
In the first chapter, I study the adoption of a new technology that allows companies to more flexibly monetize consumers utility through non-monetary means. In a duopoly setting, I show that if the competition is soft, the adoption decision is always symmetric in equilibrium but does not necessarily lead to full adoption. On the contrary, duopolists can have strict incentives not to adopt a technology a monopolist would. The model rationalises why some markets and companies continue to use outdated technologies, even if the adoption costs are zero.
In the second chapter, I study the incentives of an infinitely-lived monopolist streaming platform facing overlapping generations of consumers to bias its recommender system. Each period, the monopolist sets a single price for all prospective consumers and provides personalised recommendations and consumers never want to consume the same movie twice. In such a setting, I show that a biased recommender system can be used as a substitute for price discrimination, as it allows to ensure all consumers, in a given period, consume the same product.
In the final chapter of my thesis, co-authored with Anna Abate Bessomo, we study polarization pass-through - how exogenous increases in the polarization of party elites and/or voters impact the polarization of policies. To this end, we develop a two-stage model with twp-party electoral competition in the first stage and parliamentary voting in the second. We show that even though, in general, an increase in elite polarisation leads to more polarised policies, the pass-through is almost never full and can even be zero or negative. The pass-through is also structurally different depending on the level of mass polarization and office rents.