Market Transparency, Adverse Selection, and Moral Hazard

We study the effects of improvements in market transparency on eBay on seller exit and continuing sellers’ behavior. An improvement in market transparency by reducing strategic bias in buyer ratings led to a significant increase in buyer valuation especially of sellers rated poorly prior to the change, but not to an increase in seller exit. When sellers had the choice between exiting—a reduction in adverse selection—and improved behavior—a reduction in moral hazard—, they preferred the latter because of lower cost. Increasing market transparency improves on market outcomes

The Actual Structure of eBay’s Feedback Mechanism and Early Evidence on the Effects of Recent Changes

eBay’s feedback mechanism is considered crucial to establishing and maintaining trust on the world’s largest trading platform. The effects of a user’s reputation on the probability of sale and on prices are at the center of a large number of studies. More recent theoretical work considers aspects of the mechanism itself. Yet, there is confusion amongst users about its exact institutional details, which also changed substantially in the last few months. An understanding of these details, and how the mechanism is perceived by users, is crucial for any assessment of the system. We provide a thorough description of the institutional setup of eBay’s feedback mechanism, including recent changes to it. Most importantly, buyers now have the possibility to leave additional, anonymous ratings on sellers on four different criteria. We discuss the implications of these changes and provide first descriptive evidence on their impact on rating behavior

The Role of Competition Law in Regulatory European Private Law

In the last years we have seen the emergence of a new methodology in European private law, which (finally) dared to shift away from a classical comparative approach to one, which takes European Union law as its proper starting point. Classical European private law scholarship has mainly been backwards looking insofar as the law of the Member States, and predominantly the old codifications, determined both form and substance of new regulatory attempts. Today, this traditional approach still remains the predominant working method of the acquis group. But recent improvements in the academic debate surrounding European private law suggest a more European approach to questions of harmonisation. Taking the Treaties, secondary legislation and jurisprudence of the ECJ as its premise, academics have attempted to extrapolate common ‘European’ principles and rules to provide desperately needed substance in the search for more coherence in the continuing harmonisation process of private law. Some characteristics should be stressed as far as this new scholarship is concerned. First, it is heavily influenced by an idea which can be called ‘Europeanisation of law through hybridisation of remedies’. Second, the methodology and reasoning on which this scholarship relies can only be explained on the basis of the European Economic Constitution. Alongside these main aspects we also find a more functionalistic approach as to how modern private law should be shaped in general. Last, new forms of governance allow for more flexibility in the law-making process, also in view of the actors involved in that process. It is against this background that this contribution seeks to demonstrate in what way competition law can serve as a tool to directly or indirectly influence and regulate private law in the Member States; and, more generally, how it can further the Europeanisation of law. In terms of methodology, I mainly rely on the idea that developments in European private law can be explained by aid of those areas which lie at the periphery of classical private law but at the core of the law of the internal market. To this end, it is necessary to first and foremost understand when and how competition and private law interact in the Union. The aim is to identify both instances in which competition and private law overlap substantially and in what way they complement each other

Early Postwar Holocaust Knowledge and Jewish Missing Persons

Many historians have explored the question of what was known about mass atrocities against the Jews during World War II. The precise 'Holocaust knowledge' that emerged in the immediate postwar years has garnered far less attention. This study explores what details about mass Jewish death had reached Jewish communities, families and legal policy-makers both in Europe and abroad in the first years after the war ended. The postwar failure to trace nearly all missing Jews who had been trapped in Europe confirmed the extent of Nazi violence. This thesis argues that Jewish missing person searches after the war offer a unique pathway for understanding what Jews across the globe comprehended about the deportation process, about ghettos, Nazi camps and killing operations in eastern Europe. The correspondence arriving in postwar Jewish community offices and organisations reveals highly fragmentary knowledge of wartime events, both on the part of far-flung former refugees and the officials who attempted to assist them. Many of these searches ended in grief and even more dead-ended in 'no information located'. As a result, Jewish tracing enquiries continued to be made for years after the war and were only halted with reluctance. Some family survivors eventually did seek declarations of death for relatives who had not returned. Yet legal experts' discussions of the requirements for certifying Jewish 'legal death' further demonstrate the very limited ways in which the details of the Holocaust were understood in the latter half of the 1940s. In its efforts to bring some closure and clarity to family survivors, World Jewish Congress officials attempted to establish a universal legal standard at the early United Nations for certifying the death of Jews who had gone missing through Nazi persecution, but failed

Last Minute Feedback

Feedback mechanisms that allow partners to rate each other after a transaction are considered crucial for the success of anonymous internet trading platforms. We document an asymmetry in the feedback behavior on eBay, propose an explanation based on the micro structure of the feedback mechanism and the time when feedbacks are given, and support this explanation by findings from a large data set. Our analysis implies that the informational content of feedback records is likely to be low. The reason for this is that agents appear to leave feedbacks strategically. Negative feedbacks are given late, in the "last minute," or not given at all, most likely because of the fear of retaliative negative feedback. Conversely, positive feedbacks are given early in order to encourage reciprocation. Towards refining our insights into the observed pattern, we look separately at buyers and sellers, and relate the magnitude of the effects to the trading partners' experience

The Actual Structure of eBay’s Feedback Mechanism and Early Evidence on the Effects of Recent Changes

eBay’s feedback mechanism is considered crucial to establishing and maintaining trust on the world’s largest trading platform. The effects of a user’s reputation on the probability of sale and on prices are at the center of a large number of studies. More recent theoretical work considers aspects of the mechanism itself. Yet, there is confusion amongst users about its exact institutional details, which also changed substantially in the last few months. An understanding of these details, and how the mechanism is perceived by users, is crucial for any assessment of the system. We provide a thorough description of the institutional setup of eBay’s feedback mechanism, including recent changes to it. Most importantly, buyers now have the possibility to leave additional, anonymous ratings on sellers on four different criteria. We discuss the implications of these changes and provide first descriptive evidence on their impact on rating behavior.eBay; reputation mechanism; strategic feedback behavior; informational content; reciprocity; fear of retaliation

Last Minute Feedback

Feedback mechanisms that allow partners to rate each other after a transaction are considered crucial for the success of anonymous internet trading platforms. We document an asymmetry in the feedback behavior on eBay, propose an explanation based on the micro structure of the feedback mechanism and the time when feedbacks are given, and support this explanation by findings from a large data set. Our analysis implies that the informational content of feedback records is likely to be low. The reason for this is that agents appear to leave feedbacks strategically. Negative feedbacks are given late, in the "last minute," or not given at all, most likely because of the fear of retaliative negative feedback. Conversely, positive feedbacks are given early in order to encourage reciprocation. Towards refining our insights into the observed pattern, we look separately at buyers and sellers, and relate the magnitude of the effects to the trading partners' experience.eBay; reputation mechanism; strategic feedback behavior; informational content; reciprocity; fear of retaliation