We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 12 percent decline in guests relative to hosts with distinctively White names. In contrast, we do not see spikes in discrimination against Black or Hispanic hosts. Our results suggest that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment in 2020 translated to discrimination in economic activity, highlighting the ways in which scapegoating minority groups can shape markets. Our results also point to the role of platform design choices in enabling discrimination.

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the impact of quality disclosures on buyers' ratings using data from an online recommender system. Disclosures may alter expectations on sellers' quality and affect buyers' rating behavior. In particular, if buyers' utility depends on their expectations, a positive disclosure of quality such as an award may lead to buyers' disappointment, negatively influencing their ratings. I identify the disappointment effect in moviegoers' ratings originated from the rise in expectations due to movies' nominations for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards. I control for the selection of moviegoers who watch and rate movies before or after nominations with a non-parametric matching technique. After nominations, ratings for nominated movies significantly drop relative to ratings for movies that were not nominated. This short-term disappointment effect reduces the rating premium of nominated movies by more than five percent. CCS Concepts: • Applied computing → Economics.

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