Based on the publicly available information on the data sources and methodology used by the Census Bureau to estimate e-commerce and physical retail sales, and based on detailed e-mail communications with the Census official responsible for the retail trade data, we found, in a version of this...

In this paper, we first develop a game theoretic model of price competition between a pure play e-tailer and a bricks-and-clicks e-tailer. We show that in general, the pure play e-tailer has a lower equilibrium price. We then develop a simultaneous equation model of e-tailer price and traffic...

We examine the pricing trends in the online toy markets by using panel data regression models with error components and serial correlation. Our results indicate that both online branch of multi-channel retailers (OBMCRS) and dotcoms charge similar prices on average, and that over time their...

Online Appendix of “Steering via Algorithmic Recommendations” Chen and Tsai (2019)This paper studies whether self-preferencing affects algorithmic recommendations on dominant platforms. We focus on the dual role of Amazon.com as a platform owner and retailer. We find that products sold by...

We analyze a sample of consumer-electronics products sold by the US NewEgg online-retailer to study the impact of Price Matching Guarantees (PMGs) policies on prices. By applying aDifference-in-Differences approach,we find that prices of the policy-adopting retailer increase by 4.7% during the...

We study and contrast pricing and price evolution of online only (Dotcom) and online branch of multi-channel retailers (OBMCRs) based on two panel data sets collected from online toy markets. Panel data regression analyses reveal several interesting empirical results: over time, OBMCRs and...

This paper investigates the link between product quality and price setting for central processing units (CPUs). Using thousands of price quotes from a popular price-comparison website, we find that market fundamentals, such as the number of sellers, median price, share of convenient prices and...

This paper considers the monetization of online marketplaces. These platforms trade-off fees from advertising with commissions from product sales. While featuring advertised products can make search less efficient (lowering transaction commissions), it incentivizes sellers to compete for better...

Through charging or subsidizing shoppers, a platform participates in the pricing game played by n hosted third-party sellers, who sell different products and share profits or revenues with the platform. The platform's equilibrium access price for shoppers is determined by bilateral effects...