Academic Events

Dynamic Price Setting in Online Platform Markets: Evidence from High-Frequency Data

02:00 pm-03:30 pm, April 10, 2026 (Friday)

Room 904, Teaching Complex D Building

Justin Hilyin Leung

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Using multiple uniquely rich high-frequency datasets from a major two-sided online platform, we investigate the price setting behavior of sellers in online platform markets covering a wide range of products. We find levels of price stickiness similar to existing literature in online markets in various countries, but a larger differential between posted prices and regular prices that filter out temporary sales. Many sellers engage in countercyclical pricing and price discrimination in response to high-frequency intraweek variation in demand from platform-level members-only consumer subsidies. However, sellers show muted price responses to low-frequency surges in demand from fiscal stimuli and pandemic lockdowns. We find suggestive evidence that sellers are more likely to distribute promotional coupons, mostly in the form of volume discounts, in response to fiscal stimuli. These empirical results provide valuable insights on the responsiveness of the online economy to monetary and fiscal policies in a New Keynesian framework.

Prof. Justin H. Leung is an applied micro-economist. He currently works as an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He previously worked at the National University of Singapore and obtained a PhD degree in Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.