We are grateful to the anonymous e-commerce platform for various support on this project. We thank Qihong Liu, Shane Greenstein, Feng Zhu, Alexander MacKay, Garrett Johnson, Chiara Farronato, Larry White, Yossi Spiegel, Michael Ward, Michael Baye, Panle Barwick, Robert Porter, Lingfang Li and other participants at Harvard Business School Digital Initiative seminar, Bank of Canada BBL seminar, the Virtual Digital Economy seminar, Renmin University, the 2021 Penn State-Cornell conference, the 2021 APIOC conference, and Boston University for constructive comments. Some of us were a consultant or an employee for the studied platform at the beginning of the project. The paper only reflects the opinion of the authors, and not the opinion of any organizations. All rights reserved; 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.
Ginger Zhe Jin
During the early part of the research, I was a paid consultant for the anonymous e-commerce platform studied in this paper. The consultancy is not specific to the project.
Zhentong Lu
During the early part of the research, I was a paid consultant for the anonymous e-commerce platform studied in this paper. The consultancy is not specific to the project.
Xiaolu Zhou
During the early part of the research, I was a paid consultant for the anonymous e-commerce platform studied in this paper. The consultancy is not specific to the project.