My Journey to Airbnb: Peter Coles

This article traces the career journey of Peter Coles, Airbnb's Head Economist for Policy and Director of Data Science, from academia to tech industry leadership.

• •Coles studied math at Princeton, earned a PhD in economics (game theory) at Stanford, and co-taught with Nobel Prize winner Al Roth at Harvard Business School
• •His research focused on Market Design and 'Matching' mechanisms — pairing users from two groups when price alone can't clear the market
• •He joined eBay in 2013 to lead its economics and data science team, working on projects like fair market value estimation
• •At Airbnb since 2015, he led three phases: building a global economics team, co-founding the Central Strategy & Insights (CSI) team, and expanding policy-focused economic modeling post-pandemic
• •He now runs an academic collaboration program, publishing research with professors from MIT, Stanford, UCLA, and NYU on topics like platform quality economics