【 Webinar Series - Innovation, Productivity, and Challenges in the Digital Era: Asia and Beyond 】

The Efficiency of a Dynamic Decentralized Two-Sided Matching Market

Date: 9 Feb 2022 (Wed)

Time: 10am – 11:10am (Hong Kong Time, UTC+8)

Abstract: This paper studies a decentralized dynamic matching market by using data from a large ride-sharing platform to estimate a model of search and matching between drivers and passengers. The authors measure the preferences for trips and waiting costs of passengers and drivers. The authors assess whether and to what extent centralized algorithms that require different information sets can improve efficiency, and the authors show that information on agent preferences and search lengths are particularly important for the platform to implement algorithms that increase revenue and the total surplus of drivers and passengers.

Speaker:
Tracy Xiao LIU
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University

Co-authors:

ZhiXi WAN, Professor, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong

Chenyu YANG, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Maryland

Discussant:

Xiaolan ZHOU
Zijiang Endowed Young Scholar, Faculty of Economics and Management, East China Normal University
 

About the Webinar

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, multilevel neural nets, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other digital technologies are transforming the world. They are strengthening innovation and productivity and innovation by rendering the future more predictable and reshaping individual, business, social, and government behavior. Asia leads the world in some of these endeavors, e.g., digital platforms. The OECD lists 40% of big new digital technologies as Asian. Almost half of global digital platform business-to-consumer revenues are Asian, versus only 22% from the U.S. and 12% from the Eurozone. Profound new policy challenges arising, in consequence, include: shifting skills demanded in labor markets and “digital divide” inequality, (ii) AI expanding financial inclusion or encoding inequality, expanding or obscuring accountability, increasing transparency or obscuring amoral decision-making, and (iii) digital privacy, unsanctionable on-line libel, misinformation, manipulation, and propaganda. The ABFER, therefore, plans a monthly e-seminar series spotlighting important new research, particularly the Asia-pacific related, into these issues and providing “state-of-the-art” overviews by prominent scholars. We hope policy makers and practitioners will find the e-seminars helpful and will alert researchers to issues needing attention.

Collaborating Organizers

ABFER, CUHK-Zhejiang University Joint Research Center for Digital Economy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Department of Economics, Center for Internet Development and Governance, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM)