Market Expanding or Market Stealing? Competition with Network Effects in BikeSharing

Previously circulated as "Market Expanding or Market Stealing? Platform Competition in Bike-Sharing." We thank ofo executives for sharing data with us and for tirelessly answering our questions. Cao personally thanks the fund support for his PhD study from Guanghuaofo Center for Sharing Economy Research and Will Hunting Capital. All data employed in this article are aggregated operating indices without identifiable information on any individual user or any individual behavior. We are only authorized to use these data and the ownership of the data is retained by ofo. We appreciate constructive comments from Marc Rysman, Feng Zhu, Joe Wyer, Ying Fan, seminar attendants at Peking University, University of British Columbia and Rice University, and conference attendants at the NBER IO conference, the HBS Platform Strategy Conference, and the NBER workshop on Electric and Autonomous Vehicles. All errors are ours. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• August 16, 2018
• November 20, 2018