We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 12 percent decline in guests relative to hosts with distinctively White...

We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 12 percent decline in guests relative to hosts with distinctively White...

Do rating systems provide incentives to sellers when they are about to exit a market? Using data from Airbnb, this paper examines how end-of-game considerations affect hosts’ effort decisions. We take advantage of a regulation on short-term rentals in the City of Los Angeles to identify hosts...

Do rating systems provide incentives to sellers when they are about to exit a market? Using data from Airbnb, this paper examines how end-of-game considerations affect hosts' effort decisions. We take advantage of a regulation on short-term rentals in the City of Los Angeles to identify hosts...

Online marketplaces have proliferated over the past decade, creating new markets where none existed. By reducing transaction costs, online marketplaces facilitate transactions that otherwise would not have occurred and enable easier entry of small sellers. One central challenge faced by...

We evaluate the extent to which small businesses maintain an online presence, looking at restaurant listings on a major online review platform. While the majority of restaurants have an online presence, we find that roughly 18 percent in our sample have no presence as of the end of 2017, despite...

We study the impact of the minimum wage on firm exit in the restaurant industry, exploiting recent changes in the minimum wage at the city level. We find that the impact of the minimum wage depends on whether a restaurant was already close to the margin of exit. Restaurants with lower ratings...

There have been dozens of high-profile mass shootings in recent decades. This paper presents three main findings about the impact of mass shootings on gun policy. First, mass shootings evoke large policy responses. A single mass shooting leads to a 15% increase in the number of firearm bills...

We demonstrate that data from digital platforms such as Yelp have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification, both by providing data in close to real time (i.e. nowcasting and forecasting) and by providing additional context about how the local economy is changing. Combining...

As technology platforms have created new markets and new ways of acquiring information, economists have come to play an increasingly central role in tech companies - tackling problems such as platform design, strategy, pricing, and policy. Over the past five years, hundreds of PhD economists...