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Name of Speaker
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Kwok-Hao Lee
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Schedule
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17 Apr 2026, 10am – 11.30am (60 min talk + 30 min Q&A) |
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Venue
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HSS 3-1
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| Link to register
(via Zoom) |
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Title
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Two-Sided Markets Shaped By Platform-Guided Search
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Abstract
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We investigate concerns that vertically integrated platforms like Amazon steer demand towards their own offers via algorithmic prominence, potentially harming consumers. On Amazon, for each product, the Buybox prominence algorithm selects one seller to feature, influencing which offers consumers consider. Using novel Amazon sales and Buybox (prominence) data, we estimate a structural model capturing the effects of such algorithmic prominence on consumer choices, seller pricing, and entry. We find that the platform can indeed steer demand as 95% of consumers consider only the Buybox offer. The Buybox is highly price-elastic (−21), but skews towards Amazon’s own offers, which are featured as frequently as observably similar offers priced 5% cheaper. Still, as consumers prefer these offers, this skew does not amount to self-preferencing in the sense of harming consumers: consumer surplus is roughly maximized at the estimated Amazon Buybox advantage, which balances higher prices against showing consumers their preferred offers.
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About the Speaker
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Lee Kwok Hao is an industrial organisation economist working at the intersection of digital markets and the smart city. He uses administrative and platform data to study how algorithms and policy rules govern search, matching, pricing, and allocation, with a focus on transportation systems and public housing. As an Assistant Professor (Presidential Young Professor) at the Department of Strategy & Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, Kwok Hao has been a recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Fellowship under the Social Science Research Council of Singapore. Previously, Kwok Hao was a Presidential Fellow at the NUS Business School, during which he spent a postdoctoral stint at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University. He obtained my PhD from Princeton University after formative years at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis.
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