This is an open online academic seminar focusing on topics related to quantitative marketing.
The schedule is available as a Google calendar and you can sign up to receive updates here.
Please contact the organizers at virtualquantmark@googlegroups.com if you have any questions.
The Zoom link for all of the talks is: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93394346729?pwd=SoVXVesbltpYbQxo9tbbPF6YgopDl3.1
We will post some recordings of talks at this channel and a full list of previous talks is available here.
Monday, March 16, Noon ET - Caio Waisman (Kellogg)
How Do Intermediaries Shape Labor Market Efficiency? An Equilibrium Model and Experimental Evidence
Abstract: This paper studies labor markets where intermediaries hold market power over workers and firms, charge fees on successful hires, and can sell preferential treatment in matching. To do so, we partnered with a large online job platform to conduct an advertising field experiment with 465,000 employers. Ads that boosted “premium membership” workers to the top of search results successfully steered employers’ attention but lowered overall hiring by 0.9%. Guided by the experimental results, we develop and calibrate a continuous-time search and matching model in which platforms endogenously enter, set fee structures, and choose how much to distort matches toward premium workers. This type of match-steering can either increase or decrease aggregate employment, depending on the intensity of congestion externalities coming from non-paying workers. Given the parameters inferred from the experiment, we find that it lowers employment in our setting; banning premium memberships increases welfare by 4.2%. We also characterize optimal platform entry, quantify how premium memberships shift the Beveridge curve, and show that platforms’ endogenous choice of revenue-raising strategies can alter the implications of pro-competitive policies. Finally, we discuss our model’s applicability to two additional markets—seasonal migrants and entertainment industry workers—in which regulations limiting intermediaries’ revenue-raising strategies are common.
Monday, March 30, Noon ET - Xinrong Zhu (Imperial)
Monday, April 6, Noon ET - Eric Schwartz (Michigan)
Monday, April 13, Noon ET - Ayelet Israeli (HBS)
Monday, May 4, Noon ET - Xu Zhang (LBS)
Monday May 11, Noon ET - Dante Donati (Columbia)
The seminars will last for 60 minutes with less formal conversation afterwards.
45 minutes of presentation
15 minutes of discussion.
Optional: speaker stays in Zoom for less formal conversation after the talk.
We also often invite additional panelists with expertise relevant to the talk to ask questions during the talk.
Please email the organizers if you'd like to be considered for a seminar talk. Please include an extended abstract or a working paper.
Yufeng Huang (Rochester), Zhenling Jiang (Wharton UPenn), Emaad Manzoor (Cornell), Olivia Natan (Berkeley), Hortense Fong (Columbia), Avner Strulov-Shlain (Booth)
Founding team: Dean Eckles (MIT Sloan), Andrey Fradkin (BU Questrom), Ayelet Israeli (HBS), Andrey Simonov (CBS), Raluca Ursu (NYU Stern)
virtualquantmark@googlegroups.com