There are three essays on the economics of information technology innovation in my dissertation:1. Procurement contracting strategies in a hierarchical supply network; 2. R and D offshoring and technology learning in emerging economies firm level evidence from the information technology...

This paper studies the impact of the R&D offshoring of multinational enterprises on the firms in host emerging economies. We develop a two-stage non-cooperative game to analyze the strategic interaction between multinational and host country enterprises engaged in R&D investment. An empirical...

This paper studies the impact of the R&D offshoring of multinational enterprises on the firms in host emerging economies. We develop a two-stage non-cooperative game to analyze the strategic interaction between multinational and host country enterprises engaged in R&D investment. An empirical...

Empowered by artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots are surging as new technologies with both business potentials and customer pushback. This study exploits field experiment data on over 6,200 customers who are randomized to receive highly structured outbound sales calls from chatbots or human...

The popularity of social networking websites has spurred wide applications of socializing functions in online marketplaces, making them social commerce platforms. In the effort of promoting business and building brand, a large number of small-sized online retailers (e-tailers) increasingly rely...

Firms are exploiting AI coaches to provide training to sales agents and improve their job skills. The authors present several caveats associated with such practices based on a series of randomized field experiments. Experiment 1 shows that the incremental benefit of the AI coach over human...

Online word-of-mouth studies generally assume that a product’s average rating is the primary force shaping consumers’ purchase decisions and driving sales. Similarly, practitioners place more emphasis on average ratings by displaying them at more salient places than individual reviews. In...

People are increasingly searching for health information from online sources such as question-and-answer (Q&A) services. The health information obtained this way can have significant impacts on people’s health decisions and lives, but what constitutes a helpful answer in the medical domain...