Alibaba’s Taobao is China’s dominant C2C e-commerce platform. Relying on novel transaction level data from its electronics category, this paper examines the roles of distance as well as seller and buyer experience in Chinese e-commerce. Our estimate of a gravity model shows that the distance...

Two-sided platforms are typically plagued with asymmetric information, limiting market efficiency. Situated in the context of the increasingly popular online platforms for labor contracting (herein referred to as “online labor markets”), this paper investigates whether the implementation of...

We study the nature of home bias in online employment, wherein the employers prefer workers from their own home countries. Using a unique large-scale dataset from a major online labor platform, we identify employers' home bias in their online employment decisions. Moreover, we find that...

We explore whether there is a gender wage gap in the gig economy and examine to what degree gender differences in job application strategy could account for the gap. With a large-scale dataset from a leading online labor market, we show that females only earn around 81.4% of the hourly wage of...