Workers respond to the output choices of their peers. What explains this well documented phenomenon of peer effects? Do workers value equity, fear punishment from equity-minded peers, or does output from peers teach them about employers' expectations? We test these alternative explanations in a...

Employers in an online labor market often pursue workers with little capacity to take on more work. The pursuit of low-capacity workers is consequential, as these workers are more likely to reject employer inquires, causing a reduction in the probability a job opening is ultimately filled. In an...

A solution to marketplace information asymmetries is to have trading partners publicly rate each other post-transaction. Many have shown these ratings are effective; we show that their effectiveness deteriorates over time. The problem is that ratings are prone to inflation, with raters feeling...

Feedback scores in an online marketplace have risen sharply over time, leading to substantial top-censoring. Some of the increase is explained by more satisfied raters, but at least 35-45% is attributable to raters applying lower standards. We show that this “reputation inflation” is the...

We model social media as collections of users producing and consuming content. Users value consuming content, but doing so uses up their scarce attention, and hence they prefer content produced by more able users. Users also value receiving attention, creating the incentive to attract an...

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...

In a model with cheap talk, employers can send messages about their willingness to pay for higher ability workers, which job-seekers can use to direct their search and tailor their wage bid. Introducing such messages leads--under certain conditions--to an informative separating equilibrium which...

Employers in an online labor market often pursue workers with little capacity to take on more work. The pursuit of low-capacity workers is consequential, as these workers are more likely to reject employer inquires, causing a reduction in the probability a job opening is ultimately filled. In an...

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...

We report the results of a field experiment in which treated employers could not observe the compensation history of their job applicants. Treated employers responded by evaluating more applicants, and evaluating those applicants more intensively. They also responded by changing what kind of...