Publications
Publications
- December 2022
- Management Science
Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market
By: Yanhui Wu and Feng Zhu
Abstract
A growing number of people today are participating in the gig economy, working as independent contractors on short-term projects. 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 romance novels, 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 policymakers in the gig economy.
Keywords
Gig Workers; Platform-based Markets; Novel Writing; Creative Production; Platform Bias; Employment; Digital Platforms; Creativity; Books; Competition; Contracts
Citation
Wu, Yanhui, and Feng Zhu. "Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market." Management Science 68, no. 12 (December 2022): 8613–8634.