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Online Reviews

Online reviews of products, shops, hotels etc. are very common, but are they helpful?  Hotels, for example, could receive fictitious negative reviews from neighbouring hotels or they could even give themselves fictitious positive reviews.  You can read an interesting piece over at Slate on the economics of internet reviews.  Click here for an academic paper which empirically investigates the authenticity of online promotional reviews by comparing reviews on Tripadvisor with those on Expedia.    

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