Scientific Articles
Oscar nominations raise audience expectations, causing nominated films to receive harsher user ratings on review platforms: a disappointment effect driven by the gap between expected and experienced quality.
We study the impact of the DMA on user search behavior and traffic to online mapping services, focusing on recent changes to Google’s search results page. In January 2024, Google altered the display of location-based queries for EU users by removing clickable maps and direct links to Google Maps. Our findings indicate that the DMA had weak competitive effects, highlighting Google Maps’ dominance in a market where alternatives remain limited.
We document a sharp rise in discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb hosts during COVID-19, showing that pandemic-driven scapegoating translated into measurable declines in bookings. This is evidence that social shocks can reshape marketplace discrimination.
We study the impact of consumer heterogeneity on online ratings. Consumers differ in their experience, which can affect both their choices and ratings. Thus, biases in average ratings can arise when the opinions of experienced and novice users are aggregated.
How does competition affect the role of reputation in encouraging sellers to exert effort? More competition disciplines sellers, but at the same time, it erodes reputational premia. This paper identifies whether one effect dominates the other using data from Airbnb. I identify a negative causal effect of the number of competitors on ratings about hosts’ effort.
Working Papers
We develop a framework linking the informational content of reviews to reviewer incentives and platform design, identifying how review system architecture shapes both reviewer behavior and the quality of information aggregated on platforms.
Reputation incentives break down as service providers approach the end of their platform engagement horizon. We document end-game effects in online rating systems and study the platform design features that mitigate them.
We study Airbnb's 2022 policy requiring all-inclusive price display and show that unshrouding hidden cleaning fees reshapes host pricing strategies and consumer demand, with implications for platform transparency regulation.
When YouTube tightened ad monetization in 2018, affected creators shifted effort toward Patreon, increasing paid content production by 8% and patron earnings by 14%—documenting how platform governance shocks generate cross-platform complementor responses.
Work in Progress
We study whether Uber's pricing algorithm responds to minimum earnings regulations in ways that offset the intended worker protection effects of minimum pay rules.
Chapters and Media
- “Research: How Top Reviewers Skew Online Ratings” with Tommaso Bondi and Ryan Louis Stevens. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (2025)
- “Ensuring Your Products Aren’t Used for Discrimination” with Michael Luca and Elizaveta Pronkina. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (2022)
- “Asymmetric Information and Review Systems: The Challenge of Digital Platforms” In “Economic Analysis of the Digital Revolution” edited by J.J. Ganuza and G. Llobet. Chapter 2. 37-74 (2018). Madrid: Funcas