Feedback provides low-cost incentives for participation and now shapes online reviews, knowledge forums, social media, user-generated content, and gig platforms. We study feedback culture: some platforms are more generous with positive feedback (leniency); some issue negative feedback more readily (harshness). We develop an equilibrium framework linking design to participation and content quality through four channels: competition for feedback, preferences for informativeness (equilibrium association between quality and feedback), social comparison, and crowding (preferences over the peer mix). Our framework enables a quantitative assessment of feedback culture. We estimate the model using Stack Overflow data and conduct counterfactuals that vary leniency and harshness. Our findings underscore the gap between designing for individual preferences and designing in equilibrium, where the distribution and meaning of feedback are endogenous. For upvotes, Stack Overflow is insufficiently lenient: raising upvote leniency increases high-quality participation because the preference for nominal feedback is strong, but this effect can reverse if preferences for informativeness or social comparison dominate. For downvotes, high-quality participation peaks at a moderate level of harshness. Though high-quality contributors dislike negative feedback when considered in isolation, they may prefer greater harshness in equilibrium because it weakens competition and sharpens feedback informativeness. We further show that optimal design depends on goals and context: quality target, content selectivity (how reliably quality is detected), and the distribution of contributor quality shift the recommended leniency/harshness. Finally, we analyze equilibrium feedback informativeness as a target, showing that leniency dilutes it while harshness has non-monotone effects. 

This article examines endogenous consumer reviews and their impacts on seller pricing on Steam, an online video game platform. We find that discounts generate a positive post-promotion effect on sales through review accumulation process. We build and estimate a structural model that incorporates endogenous consumer reviews and forward-looking game sellers. Counterfactual results demonstrate that without accounting for the effects of reviews, game prices would be 14% higher. We quantify that the reviews have great externalities. The whole system generates millions in surplus for both parties, particularly benefiting new and indie game sellers, while further fostering market diversity.

This paper aims to address how privacy regulations impact financial inclusion.  We examine the consequences of a specific Google policy change that prohibited a FinTech lender in India from accessing contact details in the borrowers’ phones. Before the Google policy change, the lender used the phone numbers of all contacts in the borrowers’ phones as social collateral, this threat helped reduce the incidence of default. However, the implementation of the privacy regulation removed this threat. Using detailed application-level data, we find that the policy resulted in a significant increase in the rejection rate and a small increase in the number of applications. Specifically, our estimates indicate a 25.14% decline in application acceptance, coupled with a 3.5% increase in the number of loan applications. These results suggest that while privacy regulations may be successful in boosting demand for loans by addressing privacy concerns, they have large negative effects on acceptance rates. Notably, there was no observable change in the default rate, indicating that lenders, in response to regulations limiting social collateral, tightened their selection process. From the lender’s perspective, their total revenues declined as well. Furthermore, our analysis revealed that this tightened selection disproportionately impacted individuals with low income, younger individuals, those new to credit, and individuals belonging to lower social status. Overall, the results suggest that while privacy regulations may increase loan demand, such regulations are likely to have a large negative effect on financial inclusion and lender’s profits.