IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cnpexx/v30y2025i3p342-358.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Challenging boundaries: exploring pricing strategies, and unpaid labour time to explain earning disparities in online labour markets

Author

Listed:
  • Uma Rani
  • Valeria Pulignano
  • Nora Gobel
  • Karol Muszyński

Abstract

This paper challenges the prevailing perception of the boundless nature of Online Labour Markets (OLMs), where platforms connect service providers, such as online freelancers or workers, with clients. The focus is specifically on the pricing strategies employed by online freelancers on Upwork, a prominent international freelance platform. This article contributes empirically and theoretically to debates on the purported boundlessness of OLMs. It illustrates how online freelancers, when confronted with the rules and practices of platform algorithms, develop distinct strategies to navigate the challenges and access work across regional boundaries. Importantly, our findings reveal that despite adopting similar pricing strategies there are earnings disparities among freelancers across regional boundaries. Consequently, unpaid labour time incurred by workers in developing countries while providing services through the platform becomes a discernible cost borne by freelancers in their pursuit of accessing more lucrative opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • Uma Rani & Valeria Pulignano & Nora Gobel & Karol Muszyński, 2025. "Challenging boundaries: exploring pricing strategies, and unpaid labour time to explain earning disparities in online labour markets," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 342-358, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:30:y:2025:i:3:p:342-358
    DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2025.2462135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2025.2462135
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13563467.2025.2462135?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:30:y:2025:i:3:p:342-358. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cnpe20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.