Published in:ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper ; No. 13-050
Extent:
1 Online-Ressource (47 p)
Language:
English
DOI:
10.2139/ssrn.2310558
Identifier:
Origination:
Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments July 15, 2013 erstellt
Description:
We study the effects of improvements in eBay’s rating mechanism on seller exit and continuing sellers’ behavior. Following a large sample of sellers over time, we exploit the fact that the rating mechanism was changed to reduce strategic bias in buyer rating. That improvement did not lead to increased exit of poorly rated sellers. Yet, buyer valuation of the staying sellers — especially the poorly rated ones — improved significantly. By our preferred interpretation, the latter effect results from increased seller effort; also, when sellers have the choice between exiting (a reduction in adverse selection) and improved behavior (a reduction in moral hazard), then they prefer the latter because of lower cost