• Quality Externalities on Platforms: The Case of Airbnb

    CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker:  Sonia Jaffe  (Microsoft) Title: Quality Externalities on Platforms: The Case of Airbnb Abstract:  We explore quality externalities on platforms: when buyers have limited information, a seller's quality affects whether her buyers return to the platform, thereby impacting other sellers' future business. We propose an intuitive measure of this externality, applicable across a range of platforms. Guest Return […]

  • Machine Learning for Multiscale Model Reduction Workshop

    Virtual

    The Machine Learning for Multiscale Model Reduction Workshop will take place on March 27-29, 2019. This is the second of two workshops organized by Michael Brenner, Shmuel Rubinstein, and Tom Hou.  The first, Fluid turbulence and Singularities of the Euler/ Navier Stokes equations, will take place on March 13-15, 2019. Both workshops will be held in room G10 of the CMSA, located at 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, […]

  • Hyperbolic geometry of the olfactory space

    CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: Tatyana Sharpee (Salk Institute for Biological Studies) Title: Hyperbolic geometry of the olfactory space Abstract: The sense of smell can be used to avoid poisons or estimate a food’s nutrition content because biochemical reactions create many by-products. Thus, the presence of certain bacteria in the food becomes associated with the emission of certain volatile compounds. This perspective suggests that […]

  • Deregulation through Direct Democracy: Lessons from Liquor

    CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker:  Sarah Moshary (University of Chicago) Title:  Deregulation through Direct Democracy: Lessons from Liquor Abstract:  This paper examines the merits of state control versus private provision of spirits retail, using the 2012 deregulation of liquor sales in Washington state as an event study. We document effects along a number of dimensions: prices, product variety, convenience, substitution to other goods, […]