Technological advances such as smartphones, mobile applications, and online platforms have enabled a new form of economy, known as a gig economy, at a large scale, in which there is a free-market system allowing organizations (job providers) to hire independent contractors (job seeker). Unlike...

The ‘gig economy’ refers to a market system in which companies or individual requesters hire workers to perform short assignments. These transactions are mediated through online labour platforms, either outsourcing work to a geographically dispersed crowd or allocating work to individuals in...

Gig employment is among the most precarious type of work in the U.S. economy. While the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of gig workers and their role in contemporary society, gig workers have little in the way of job security or benefits. Many gig jobs were considered “essential...

The ‘gig economy’ refers to a market system in which companies or individual requesters hire workers to perform short assignments. These transactions are mediated through online labour platforms, either outsourcing work to a geographically dispersed crowd or allocating work to individuals in...

"Freelance Your Way to Freedom is the gig economy Bible that every person needs to start a side hustle with serious profitable potential today. This book will provide actionable advice, real-world scenarios, and personal tips that have enabled Alex to take her freelancing profile from...

We study the performance effects of payment schemes for freelancers offering services on an online platform in an RCT. Under the initial scheme, the firm pays workers a pure sales commission. The intervention reduces the commission rate and adds a fixed payment per processed order to insure...

We study the performance effects of payment schemes for freelancers offering services on an online platform in an RCT. Under the initial scheme, the firm pays workers a pure sales commission. The intervention reduces the commission rate and adds a fixed payment per processed order to insure...

Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process causes (or may cause) the autonomy of various labor functions, and its impact in creating (or stymieing) various job opportunities on the labor market....

We develop a macroeconomic theory of the division of household tasks between servants and own work and how it is affected by automation in households and firms. We calibrate the model for the U.S. and apply it to explain the historical development of household time use and the distribution of...

In the past decade, crowdworking on online labor market platforms has become the main source of income for a growing number of people worldwide. This development has led to increasing political and scientific interest in the wages that people can earn on such platforms. In this article, we...

We propose a model of "trade" between high income and low-income groups where the rich being scared of the spread of infection hires the poor to engage them in exposure-intensive outdoor activities as workers in the household industry. People who endure hardships and sustain exposure to...

Feminist tradition reveals with particular clarity how the online economy has contrived to be both apparently open and persistently unaccountable. Diverse feminist critiques amount to an overlapping insistence that the systems that organize our technology should be governable by the people who...

Only ten years ago, there were more internet users in countries like France or Germany than in all of Africa put together. But much has changed in a decade. The year 2018 marks the first year in human history in which a majority of the world's population are now connected to the internet. This...

This paper presents findings from the Leeds Index of Platform Labour Protest, a database of platform worker protest events around the world which gathers data from online news media reports and other online sources. For the period January 2017 to July 2020, we identified 1,271 instances of...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.'s zero-hours contract (ZHC) - a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workers to decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one hand they unlock job...

This study provides empirical evidence from different regions of the world to identify avenues for platform economy workers to access freedom of association and collective bargaining. It shows that collective protests, the establishment of new organizations of workers and platforms, social...

Dieses Working Paper stellt die Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts "Teilhabe durch Crowdworking" (Universität Hamburg) dar, in dem die Partizipation von Menschen mit Behinderung und Menschen mit Sorgeverpflichtungen an ortsungebundener Plattformarbeit untersucht wurde. Einleitend werden die...

We develop a macroeconomic theory of the division of household tasks between servants and own work and how it is affected by automation in households and firms. We calibrate the model for the U.S. and apply it to explain the historical development of household time use and the distribution of...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.’s zero-hours contract (ZHC) – a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workers to decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one hand they unlock job...

In the past decade, crowdworking on online labor market platforms has become the main source of income for a growing number of people worldwide. This development has led to increasing political and scientific interest in the wages that people can earn on such platforms. In this article, we...

We propose a model of "trade" between high income and low-income groups where the rich being scared of the spread of infection hires the poor to engage them in exposure-intensive outdoor activities as workers in the household industry. People who endure hardships and sustain exposure to...

Feminist tradition reveals with particular clarity how the online economy has contrived to be both apparently open and persistently unaccountable. Diverse feminist critiques amount to an overlapping insistence that the systems that organize our technology should be governable by the people who...