Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

Edward L. Glaeser; Hyunjin  Kim; Michael  Luca

Working Paper | 2018

Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

by Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca

Abstract

We demonstrate that data from digital platforms such as Yelp have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification, both by providing data in close to real time (i.e., nowcasting and forecasting) and by providing additional context about how the local economy is changing. Combining Yelp and Census data, we find that gentrification, as measured by changes in the educational, age, and racial composition within a zip code, is strongly associated with increases in the numbers of grocery stores, cafes, restaurants, and bars, with little evidence of crowd-out of other categories of businesses. We also find that changes in the local business landscape is a leading indicator of housing price changes and that the entry of Starbucks (and coffee shops more generally) into a neighborhood predicts gentrification. Each additional Starbucks that enters a zip code is associated with a 0.5% increase in housing prices.

Keywords: Geographic Location; Local Range; Transition; Data and Data Sets; Measurement and Metrics; Forecasting and Prediction;

Language: English

Format: Print

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Citation:

Glaeser, Edward L., Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca. "Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 24952, August 2018.

Dominant platform businesses often develop products in adjacent markets to complement their core business. One common approach used to gain traction in these adjacent markets has been to pursue a tying strategy. For example, Microsoft pre-installed Internet Explorer into Windows, and Apple set Apple Maps as the iOS default. Policymakers have raised concerns that dominant platforms may be leveraging their market power to gain traction for lower quality products when they use a tying strategy. In this paper, we empirically explore this question by examining Google’s decision to tie its new reviews product to its search engine. We experimentally vary the reviews displayed above Google’s organic search results to show either exclusively Google reviews (Google’s current tying strategy) or reviews from multiple platforms determined to be the best-performing by Google’s own organic search algorithm. We find that users prefer the version that does not exclude competitor reviews. Furthermore, looking at observational data on user traffic to Yelp from search engines, we find that Google’s exclusion of downstream competitors may have been effective. The share of Yelp’s traffic coming from Google has declined over this period, relative to traffic from Bing and Yahoo (which do not exclude other companies’ reviews), and Google reviews has grown quicker than Yelp and TripAdvisor during the period in which they excluded these (and other) reviews providers. Overall, these results shed light on platform strategy: tying has the potential to facilitate entry in complementary markets, even when the tied product is of worse quality than competitors.

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence

Hyunjin Kim, Michael Luca, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Market Platforms; Competitive Strategy; Product Marketing; Quality;

Citation:

Kim, Hyunjin, and Michael Luca. "Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-045, October 2018. (Revised December 2018. Forthcoming in Management Science.) View Details

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As technology platforms have created new markets and new ways of acquiring information, economists have come to play an increasingly central role in tech companies—tackling problems such as platform design, strategy, pricing, and policy. Over the past five years, hundreds of PhD economists have accepted positions in the technology sector. In this paper, we explore the skills that PhD economists apply in tech companies, the companies that hire them, the types of problems that economists are currently working on, and the areas of academic research that have emerged in relation to these problems.

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Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

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