Implications of market rating-based segmentation on intra-platform competition: an application to Airbnb's market in Barcelona

Arenas, Paul; Paredes, Saúl

Implications of market rating-based segmentation on intra-platform competition: an application to Airbnb's market in Barcelona

Llicència

Citació

Arenas, P, Paredes, S. Implications of market rating-based segmentation on intra-platform competition: an application to Airbnb's market in Barcelona. 2021. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/49208

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Resum

In recent years, large platforms have raised concerns that they may engage in anticompetitive practices that affect the market competition. Therefore, analyze the competition structure inside platforms is a relevant issue that has not been treated in many empirical research. This study analyze how a platform's owner could affect the degree of competition among members of one group in the platform through biasing searching results using rating classifications. In this paper, we perform an application to Airbnb's market in Barcelona given the particularity of rating is an unavailable searching filter to guests. We found evidence that listing's rating classification represents an important market segmentation in the Airbnb's market in Barcelona that could imply a possible practice of biasing searching results. Moreover, we found that the intensity of competition is differentiated by the rating-related segments, which means that this segments are concentrating competition.

Descripció

Treball fi de màster de: Master's Degree in Specialized Economic Analysis: Competition and Market Regulation. Curs 2020-2021
Director: Miguel Espinosa