Volume 68, Issue 12

December 2022

Pages 8515-9218, iii-iv

Article Information

Supplemental Materials

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Downloaded 2086 times

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Information

Received:August 21, 2019
Accepted:September 13, 2021
Published Online:March 03, 2022

Copyright © 2022, INFORMS

Cite as

Yanhui Wu, Feng Zhu (2022) Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market. Management Science 68(12):8613-8634.

https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4329

Keywords

Acknowledgments

For helpful discussions and insightful comments, the authors thank Bruno Cassiman, Chris Forman, Luis Garicano, Bob Gibbons, Justin Johnson, and John Van Reenen; participants at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Organizational Economics Meeting, the NBER Chinese Economy Meeting, the NBER Summer Institute, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics Summer Forum, the Platform Strategy Research Symposium at Boston University, the Digital Innovation Workshop at Boston College, the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics at the University of Washington, LSE-Chicago-CEPR Incentives, the Management and Organization Conference, the 5th Annual Bank of Canada-Tsinghua PBCSF-University of Toronto Conference on the Chinese Economy, the Wharton Technology and Innovation Conference, and the 13th Organizational Economics Workshop in Australia (Canberra); and seminar participants at Arizona State University, Boston University (Questrom), Carnegie Mellon University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Columbia University, Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Jinan University, London Business School, MIT Sloan, Sun Yat-sen University, the University of California at Irvine and Riverside, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California.

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We study the effects of competition on gig workers’ effort and creativity on a Chinese novel-writing platform. Authors produce and sell their works chapter by chapter under a revenue-sharing or pay-by-the-word contract with the platform. Exploiting a regulation that induced a massive entry of novels in the romance genre but not other genres, we find that, on average, intensified competition led authors to produce content more quickly, whereas its effect on book novelty was weak. However, revenue-sharing books responded to competition substantially more than pay-by-the-word books, particularly regarding novelty. Moreover, the effect of competition on novelty is considerably stronger for books at earlier stages of the product life cycle. Finally, the platform increased the promotion of contracted books, which disproportionately favored pay-by-the-word books. We discuss the implications of these results for creative workers, platform firms, and policy makers in the gig economy. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems. Supplemental Material: Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4329. Previous Back to Top Next * Figures * References * Related * Information * Volume 68, Issue 12 December 2022 Pages 8515-9218, iii-iv Article Information Supplemental Materials Metrics Downloaded 2086 times Cited 0 times Information * Received: August 21, 2019 * Accepted: September 13, 2021 * Published Online: March 03, 2022 Copyright © 2022, INFORMS Cite as Yanhui Wu, Feng Zhu (2022) Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market. Management Science 68(12):8613-8634. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4329 Keywords * competition * contracts * creative production * platform bias * gig economy Acknowledgments For helpful discussions and insightful comments, the authors thank Bruno Cassiman, Chris Forman, Luis Garicano, Bob Gibbons, Justin Johnson, and John Van Reenen; participants at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Organizational Economics Meeting, the NBER Chinese Economy Meeting, the NBER Summer Institute, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics Summer Forum, the Platform Strategy Research Symposium at Boston University, the Digital Innovation Workshop at Boston College, the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics at the University of Washington, LSE-Chicago-CEPR Incentives, the Management and Organization Conference, the 5th Annual Bank of Canada-Tsinghua PBCSF-University of Toronto Conference on the Chinese Economy, the Wharton Technology and Innovation Conference, and the 13th Organizational Economics Workshop in Australia (Canberra); and seminar participants at Arizona State University, Boston University (Questrom), Carnegie Mellon University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Columbia University, Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Jinan University, London Business School, MIT Sloan, Sun Yat-sen University, the University of California at Irvine and Riverside, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California. 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Research Papers: 'Reverend Insanity', original novel ideas