Online Marketplaces’ Contract Design: Evidence from Alibaba’s Rebate Contracts
2019/12/13
研討會日期 : 2019-12-13
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Xiaolu Zhou (周曉露)
主持人 : Professor Kong-Pin Chen
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Professor Zhou received her Ph.D. in Economics from Pennsylvania State University in 2017. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Xiamen University. His research fields are Industrial Organization, and Applied Microeconomics.
演講摘要 : This paper studies the effectiveness of e-commerce platforms' contracts in achieving two goals -- first, to stimulate low price and promote transactions, second, to benefit high-demand and low-cost sellers. To do it, I focus on a rebate contract employed on a dominant e-commerce marketplace in China. The contract has a discontinuous rebate for sellers beyond a year-end revenue threshold. Descriptive evidence suggests that sellers dynamically set prices to accumulate revenue above the threshold. Motivated by this, I construct a model of hetergenous sellers' dynamic pricing decisions under rebate incentives and estimate sellers' demand and cost. I use the model simulates to compare the rebate contract with alternative ones. Counterfactual results show that a lower commission rate is more cost-effective to generate industry revenue than a nonlinear rebate, but the lower commission rate redistributes demand from small and medium sellers to large ones, and in particular, hurts high-demand and low-cost sellers. Shortening the contract period to a quarter intensifies rebate incentives and still benefits high-demand and low-cost sellers.
