This paper studies the effects of Airbnb on residential mobility and housing prices in Madrid between 2010 and 2018. To identify causal effects, I exploit a neighborhood-year panel and a shift-share instrumental variable strategy based on spatial variation in tourist attractiveness and the rapid expansion of the platform. I find that an increase of 100 entire-home Airbnb listings in a neighborhood reduces annual residential inflows by approximately 50 individuals (2% of the mean), has no significant effect on outflows, and increases housing prices by 2%. A causal mediation analysis suggests that the effect of Airbnb on residential inflows operates primarily through its impact on housing prices. Consistent with this mechanism, the reduction in inflows is concentrated among individuals without a college degree. Overall, these findings imply that short-term rental platforms shape neighborhood dynamics not only through housing prices but also by affecting residential mobility patterns.

Evidence from surveys and lab experiments suggests that people’s propensity to conform to the opinion of others is lower in more individualistic cultures. Do these findings hold in real-world settings? This paper quantifies the role of culture as a determinant of social influence in the context of online consumer reviews. Exploring discontinuities in the way Tripadvisor displays average ratings, I estimate how reviewers from different countries respond to the average opinion of past consumers. A discontinuous increase of 0.5 stars in a restaurant’s average rating leads reviewers from countries with the least individualistic cultures to report ratings that are 0.1 stars higher. The size of the effect reduces in individualism and becomes statistically insignificant for consumers from the most individualistic cultures. The negative relationship between individualism and reviewers’ tendency to conform cannot be explained by country-level predictors of individualism, such as income or religion. Moreover, cross-regional variation within Italy reveals that the correlation between cultural values and social influence also holds across reviewers from different regions within the same country. These findings imply that average ratings converge faster to firms’ real quality when reviewers are from more individualistic cultures.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Airbnb and long-term residential rents, using Santa Monica, California, as a case study. In 2015, Santa Monica adopted the home sharing ordinance (HSO), a stringent regulation aimed at restricting short-term rentals (STR). I employ the synthetic control method to a panel comprising Airbnb listings and residential rents from multiple cities in Los Angeles County. This approach is used to estimate the causal effects of Santa Monica’s HSO on Airbnb listings and residential rents. My results show a 60% reduction in Airbnb listings in Santa Monica within two years of implementing the ordinance. Despite this significant decrease, the effect of the regulation on rents was not significant. Suggestive evidence indicates that the ordinance’s ineffectiveness in increasing the number of houses allocated to long-term tenants may have contributed to its negligible impact on rental rates. This study reveals a scenario where a marked decrease in Airbnb activity did not lower residential rents, highlighting the need for context-specific evaluations of the relationship between STRs and local housing dynamics.