Reactions for Geopolitical Shocks on Online Labour Platform: Empirical Evidence Under Ukraine-Russia War

Abstract

As digital labor platforms play an increasingly central role in the global workforce, their governance decisions—especially in response to geopolitical crises—have profound implications for market outcomes and worker livelihoods. Despite their growing importance, little is known about how platforms strategically respond to external shocks and how these decisions reshape opportunity structures for different types of freelancers. This study exploits a natural experiment arising from a platform governance decision to remove all Russian freelancers in May 2022, following the onset of the Russia–Ukraine war. Drawing on a granular panel dataset of 428,401 daily work records linked to 80,141 freelancer profiles, we apply a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design to estimate the causal effects of this exogenous labor supply shock. We find that the intervention significantly increased average earnings for the remaining workforce, primarily through higher income per task rather than an increase in task volume. By situating the analysis within a platform governance perspective, this study contributes to research on labor market shocks, platform strategy, and algorithmic reallocation. Our findings show that platform responses to geopolitical risk can reinforce structural inequalities through selective opportunity redistribution, highlighting the strategic role of platform governance in shaping post-shock labor market dynamics.