Tobias J. Klein

Combining ICT with Behaviour Models

Tobias Klein is convinced that recent developments in information and communication technologies together with the availability of big data can help us to address research questions in a novel way if we combine them with tractable models of individual behaviour. Insights gained in this way then present the opportunity to implement welfare-improving policies that are at the same time in the interest of the firms offering a service. This can even lead to the creation of new markets. Examples are the online rating mechanisms used by eBay, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Yelp, Uber and others that discipline market participants via online ratings and lead to more transparency.

Mr Klein's research is in health economics, empirical industrial organisation and econometrics. His recent research interests include platform markets, sometimes also referred to as two-sided markets. He is also interested in media markets and more generally markets in which advertising plays an important role. His second line of research concerns the effects of adverse selection and moral hazard and how they can be remedied by innovative market design. More specifically, he works on the design of health insurance policies and on the effects of market transparency on adverse selection and moral hazard in online markets.

Tobias Klein is Associate Professor at Tilburg University. He studied economics at the University of Mannheim, the University of California at Berkeley and University College London, receiving his PhD from Mannheim in 2006. He is deputy managing editor of the Econometrics Journal, associate editor of Empirical Economics and the Review of Economics and was editor of a special issue of Information Economics and Policy on current regulatory issues in media and entertainment markets.