{"id":"AIBD-0670","title":"eBay Machine Translation raises U.S. exports on eBay to Spanish-speaking Latin America (Brynjolfsson, Hui and Liu)","summary":"eBay's in-house machine translation, introduced for Latin America in May 2014, raised exports on eBay by 10.9% in the published study and 17.5% to 20.9% in the working paper.","date_observed":"2014-05-01","date_basis":"source information","date_precision":"month","benefit_status":"reported","source_collection":null,"source_entry":null,"account":"In 2014 eBay replaced Bing Translator with its own machine translation system, eBay Machine Translation (eMT), in three regions: Russia in January, Latin America in May and the European Union in July. For buyers in Latin America, eMT translated Spanish search queries into English and showed English listing titles in Spanish. Human raters accepted 91.4% of eMT translations of frequent queries, against 84.4% for Bing, a moderate gain of 7 percentage points. Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT and Xiang Hui and Meng Liu of Washington University in St. Louis used eBay data to compare U.S. exports on eBay to Spanish-speaking Latin American countries before and after the change with exports to other destinations. The 2018 working paper estimates that eMT raised those exports by 17.5% to 20.9%, depending on the time window, and export revenue by 13.1% to 17%. The version that Management Science published in December 2019 reports a rise in exports of 10.9%. Effects were larger for differentiated and cheaper products, for listings with longer titles and for less experienced buyers. The study is a natural experiment on one platform, and eBay supplied the data. Hui disclosed a paid summer internship at eBay from June to August 2015 and no tie to eBay after that.","category":"general benefit","unexpected":false,"purpose":"eMT was built to translate listings for buyers in other languages. More cross-border trade on the platform was that purpose.","system":"eBay Machine Translation (eMT), an in-house statistical machine-learning translation system","model_version":null,"developer":"eBay","deployer":"eBay","location":"eBay marketplace: U.S. sellers and buyers in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries","domain":"E-commerce and international trade","segment":null,"benefit_type":"Increased Product Revenue","taxonomy_note":null,"registry_ids":{},"ratings":[{"group":"personal","depth":1,"reason":"U.S. sellers sold more to Spanish-speaking buyers after translation."},{"group":"organizational","depth":2,"reason":"Exports on eBay to Spanish-speaking Latin America rose by 10.9% in the published estimate and 17.5% to 20.9% in the working paper."}],"ai_role":{"status":"assessed","statement":"A difference-in-differences comparison with countries that did not receive the change isolates the effect of the translation system on exports."},"evidence":[{"kind":"peer-reviewed study","citation":"Brynjolfsson E, Hui X, Liu M. Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evidence from a Large Digital Platform. Management Science. 2019;65(12):5449-5460. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2019.3388 (publisher abstract as deposited with Crossref).","title":"Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evidence from a Large Digital Platform","url":"https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3388","date":"2019-12-01","written_by":"independent","quote":"We find that the introduction of a new machine translation system has significantly increased international trade on this platform, increasing exports by 10.9%."},{"kind":"preprint","citation":"Brynjolfsson E, Hui X, Liu M. Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evidence from a Large Digital Platform. NBER Working Paper 24917, August 2018.","title":"Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? 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