The Internet has long been argued to have “flattened” the world. However, a variety of work has shown that frictions do remain, deriving from biases and preferences tied to individual-level differences, e.g., cultural, demographic, and geographic. Such biases, if present, are undesirable...

A common issue in online dating platforms is that many users focus their attention on a subset of popular peers, which leads to congestion and thus lower matching rates. Our study examines the results of a randomized natural field experiment, wherein our corporate partner, a large online dating...

We consider the role of online dispute resolution (ex-post guarantees of supplier quality) when they are introduced in the presence of an online reputation system (an ex-ante informational mechanism), in the context of online service procurement platforms. We argue that dispute resolution will...

This paper examines how i) a crowdfunding campaign's pro-sociality (the production of a public versus private good), ii) the social network structure (embeddedness) among individuals advocating for the campaign on social media, and iii) the volume of social media activity around a campaign,...

Biases in online platforms pose a threat to social inclusion. We examine the influence of a novel source of bias in online philanthropic lending, namely that associated with religious differences. We first propose a measure of religion distance between pairs of countries, which we incorporate...