Daily-deal platforms have been in the spotlight in recent years. Originated from the group-buying selling strategy, these platforms have now shifted toward a business model that combines deep discount and advertising. We analyze the structure of daily-deal platforms from the two-sided market...

Platforms care about the quality of components they host. For example, a computer operating system is more popular - and thus more profitable - when the software is high quality. Some platforms offer special arrangements to high-quality firms - for example, Apple promotes high-quality Macintosh...

Purpose In this paper, the authors study the effect of consumers' fairness preferences on dynamic pricing strategies adopted by platforms in a non-cooperative game. Design/methodology/approach This study applies fair game and repeated game theory. Findings This study reveals that, in a one-shot...

This paper develops a duopoly model of user-generated content (UGC) platforms that compete for consumers and content producers in two-sided markets with network externalities. Each platform can choose the level of investment into a content quality assurance (CQA) system and the level of...

We characterize optimal reward-based crowdfunding where production is contingent on an aggregate funding threshold. Crowdfunding adapts project-implementation to demand (market-testing) and its multiple prices enhance rent-extraction via pivotality, even for large crowds, indeed arbitrarily...

This paper investigates the optimal design of crowdfunding where crowdfunders are potential consumers with standard motivations and entrepreneurs are profit maximizing agents. We characterize the typical crowdfunding mechanism where the entrepreneur commits to produce only if aggregate funding...

Online labor platforms provide freelancers the opportunity to work for clients on a project basis. However, disputes can occur as a result of the platform users' attempts to game the system, disagreement on the work quality or uncertainty of the quality outcomes. Traditionally, the dispute would...

Problem definition: The success of a gig platform is crucially driven by its ability to retain service providers. However, gig workers are independent contractors whose working schedules are not fully controlled by the platform. To overcome this challenge, gig platforms have commonly relied on...

I study a platform-mediated two-sided matching with incomplete information. Platform users voluntarily disclose their taste information to the platform, and the platform aggregates and redistributes the collected information back to each user before they form matches. I characterize conditions...