Julius Goedde

I’m an economist working at the intersection of market design and the digital economy. Combining economic theory, recent econometric & machine learning techniques for causal inference as well as structural econometrics, I study platform design and user behavior. I’m on the 2024-25 job market and available for interviews.

In spring 2024 I visited Yeon-Koo Che at the Economics department of Columbia University.

Visit my personal website for up-to-date information.

Job Market Paper

• Pricing in markets without money: Theory and evidence from home exchanges

Abstract: I examine how to set prices with internal currencies instead of real money. Users earn currency by supplying on a platform and can only spend it by consuming on the platform. A stylized model of an exchange economy with endogenous production shows that reducing the price of attractive goods below market-clearing levels can increase their supply and user welfare. The key insight is that individuals can become satiated with currency because they typically only have a limited demand for the specific goods on the platform. This creates large income effects on supply. I confirm key predictions of the model on a widely used platform for exchanging personal residences for holidays. Combining proprietary data on the universe of transactions with several quasi-experimental designs, I demonstrate large income effects and show that a price-compressing reform increased the supply of attractive homes. Remarkably, participation does not decrease. Further evidence suggests that many hosts have a strong preference against for-money rental platforms. Broader insights are that lessons from traditional markets may not easily extend to markets without real money and that the latter may have advantages even in contexts where monetary transactions are commonplace.  

Work in progress

• Building trust in markets: Evidence from home exchanges (with Gabrielle Fack and Liam Wren-Lewis)

• Welfare and inequality in token-money systems with endogenous supply (with Sam Altmann and Liam Wren-Lewis)

• Two-sided markets in the presence of switches (with Xavier Lambin and Jérôme Pouyet)