Disputes can be a common occurrence in online labor platforms due to users' gaming behavior and disagreement over contracting terms. While traditional platforms resolve disputes using a centralized approach, there are emerging platforms that relegate dispute resolution to independent platform users through a voting mechanism. We study when and why this decentralized approach can be better for the platform and the social welfare and how the platform should adjust the dispute fee when adopting it.

We consider the optimal operating policies of a free-to-play game. Accounting for social comparisons between free and premium players, we model the game attracting or losing players. We characterize optimal dynamic pricing and advertising policies and show that the developer should prioritize initial growth through aggressive advertising while postponing the introduction of premium subscription. Surprisingly, the optimal subscription price may start high and gradually decrease.

In many service encounters front-line workers have the discretion to attempt to resolve a customer request or to transfer the customer to an expert service provider. We experimentally examine this decision. Our experiments show that transfers are too low under some incentive systems. However, transfer behavior responds correctly to congestion information. Taken together, these results advance our understanding of cognitive capabilities and rationality limits on human server behavior.