Please note: Due to low attendance, this seminar has been postponed and will be reorganised.

This paper examines the effect of the number of sellers of a good on buyers' demand, using an extensive dataset from an e-commerce platform (PriceMinister.com) in France. Accounting for seller characteristics constitutes variety amongst the same product. Although buyers may prefer a wide variety, it can introduce a search cost. Using a flexible semiparametric specification, Senay find that the demand of buyers does not monotonically increase in relation to the number of sellers (variety), contrary to assumptions in the literature. Senay illustrates the consequences of misspecification of these network effects through a counterfactual simulation.

Senay Sokullu, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Bristol

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Check out our other two upcoming Data Science Seminars:

Sidharth Jaggi, Friday 29 April, 14:00-15:00

Luca Giuggioli, Wednesday 11 May, 13:00-14:00