Using order-level data from Uber Technologies, we study how the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing shutdown of businesses in the United States in 2020 affected small business restaurant supply and demand on the Uber Eats platform. We find evidence that small restaurants experience significant increases in activity on the platform following the closure of the dine-in channel. We document how locality- and restaurant-specific characteristics moderate the size of the increase in activity through the digital channel and explain how these increases may be due to both demand- and supply-side shock. We observe an increase in the intensity of competitive effects following the economic shock and show that growth in the number of providers on a platform induces both market expansion and heightened inter-provider competition. Higher platform activity in response to the shock does not only have short-run implications: restaurants with larger demand shocks had a higher on-platform survival rate one year after the lockdown, suggesting that the platform channel contributes towards long-run resilience following a crisis. Our findings document the heterogeneous effects of platforms during the pandemic, underscore the critical role that digital technologies play in enabling business resilience in the economy, and provide insight into how platforms can manage competing incentives when balancing market expansion and growth goals with the competitive interests of their incumbent providers.

翻译：基于 Uber Technologies 的订单层面数据，我们研究了 2020 年 COVID-19 疫情及其引发的美国企业停摆对 Uber Eats 平台上小型餐饮企业供需的影响。证据表明，在堂食渠道关闭后，小型餐厅在该平台上的活跃度显著增加。我们记录了地域特征和餐厅特征如何调节数字渠道中活跃度增幅的大小，并解释了这些增长可能源于需求侧与供给侧冲击的双重驱动。我们观察到经济冲击后竞争效应的强度有所上升，并表明平台上服务提供者数量的增长既会引发市场扩张，也会加剧提供者之间的竞争。疫情期间增长的平台活跃度并不局限于短期影响：一年后，承受更大需求冲击的餐厅在平台上的存活率更高，这表明平台渠道在危机后有助于形成长期韧性。我们的研究结果揭示了疫情期间平台的异质性效应，强调了数字技术在支持经济中企业韧性方面的关键作用，并为平台在平衡市场扩张与增长目标及其现有服务提供者竞争利益时如何管理相互冲突的激励提供了洞察。