Muxin Li  

CORE

will give a presentation on:

 "Managing participation and transactions on a digital platform"

Abstract

We provide a unified framework to compare the merits of various strategies that platforms can adopt to facilitate the interaction among users and generate value from these interactions. Using a micro-foundation of transactions among users (typically, buyers and sellers), we analyse different tools that a platform can use to manage participation and transactions. On top of charging membership and/or transactions fees, we allow the platform to control the price of the traded products, or to use data analytics to help sellers practice differential pricing. Our (current) results are the following: a platform setting membership fees (i) attracts fewer sellers and more buyers than a free platform; (ii) does not achieve larger profits if it can control the price of the traded products, (iii) or when it shares information about buyers with sellers.