A Framework for Detection, Measurement and Welfare Analysis of Platform Bias
15 Nov 2023
15:00 -16:00
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: Members of University of Cambridge
Online
(where applicable, further details sent upon registration)
Join our Economics and Policy seminar
Speaker: Professor Imke Reimers, Cornell University
About the seminar topic
Regulators are responding to growing platform power with curbs on platforms’ potentially biased exercise of power, creating urgent needs for both a workable definition of platform bias and ways to detect and measure it. We develop a simple equilibrium framework in which consumers choose among ranked alternatives, while the platform chooses product display ranks based on product characteristics and prices.
We define the platform’s ranks to be biased if they deliver outcomes that lie below the frontier that maximises a weighted sum of seller and consumer surplus. This framework leads to two bias testing approaches, which we compare using data from Amazon, Expedia, and Spotify, as well as Monte Carlo simulations. We then illustrate the use of our structural framework directly, producing estimates of both platform bias and its welfare cost. The EU’s Digital Services Act’s provision for researcher data access would allow easy implementation of our approach in contexts important to policy makers.
Speaker bio
Imke Reimers is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Business Economics at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management within the SC Johnson College of Business. She is broadly interested in the industrial organisation of digital markets, information, and intellectual property. Her research mainly focuses on three specific questions:
- how does information technology affect the functioning and efficiency of markets
- how do copyright and other forms of intellectual property affect access to information
- how do digital platforms use their market power and what are the consequences of their actions?
Professor Reimers received a PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota in 2013. She also holds a BS in mathematics and economics from the University of Nebraska. Before joining Cornell, she was an associate professor of economics at Northeastern University.
Join the meeting online
Join the event on Zoom on 15 November
Meeting ID: 844 1713 2019
Passcode: 146978
If you would like to know more about this event, please email Luke Slater.