Platform marketplaces can potentially steer buyers to certain sellers by recommending or guaranteeing those sellers. Money-back guarantees--which create a direct financial stake for the platform in seller performance--might be particularly effective at steering, as they align buyer and platform...

This paper estimates the magnitude and distribution of surplus from the knowledge worker gig economy using data from an online labor market. Labor demand elasticities determine workers' wages, and buyers' past market experience shapes both their job posting frequency and hiring rates. We find...

Search frictions can explain why the "law of one price" fails in retail markets and why even firms selling commodity products have pricing power. In online commerce, physical search costs are low, yet price dispersion is common. We use browsing data from eBay to estimate a model of consumer...

Online contract labor globalizes traditionally local labor markets, with platforms that enable employers, most of whom are in high-income countries, to more easily outsource tasks to contractors, primarily located in low-income countries. This market is growing rapidly; we provide descriptive...

Despite substantial efforts to help consumers search in more intuitive ways, text search remains the predominant tool for product discovery online. In this paper, we explore the effects of visual and textual cues for search refinement on consumer search and purchasing behavior. We collaborate...

Digital labor markets are rapidly expanding and connecting companies and contractors on a global basis. We review the environment in which these markets take root, the micro- and macro-level studies of their operations, their ongoing evolution and recent trends, and perspectives for undertaking...

By comparing uncollateralized business loans made by a big tech lending program with conventional bank loans, we find that big tech loans tend to be smaller and have higher interest rates and that borrowers of big tech loans tend to repay far before maturity and borrow more frequently. These...

Regulators around the world are discussing, or taking action to limit, self-preferencing by large platforms. This paper explores Amazon's search rankings of its own products as the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) was coming into effect. Using data on over 8 million Amazon search...