Social broadcasting networks such as Twitter in the U.S. and Weibo in China are transforming the way online word-of-mouth (WOM) is disseminated and consumed in the digital age. We investigate whether and how Twitter WOM affects movie sales by estimating a dynamic panel data model using publicly...

Social broadcasting networks such as Twitter in the U.S. and "Weibo" in China are transforming the way online word of mouth (WOM) is disseminated and consumed in the digital age. In the present study, we investigated whether and how Twitter WOM affects movie sales by estimating a dynamic panel...

We study optimal securitization in the presence of an initial moral hazard. A financial intermediary creates and then sells to outside investors defaultable assets, whose default risk is determined by the unobservable costly effort exerted by the intermediary. We calculate the optimal contract...

Despite heated debate about the pros and cons of online physician ratings, very little systematic work examines the correlation between physicians’ online ratings and their actual medical performance. Using patients’ ratings of physicians at RateMDs.com and the Florida Hospital Discharge...

among consumers and between consumers and brands. Social media users can now interact with brands directly through Facebook and Twitter. These new features make social media a very distinctive class of online WOM. In this paper, we formulate a random coefficient discrete choice model of consumer...

“Googling” is now ubiquitous in our society. We typically start searching on Google before we make purchase decisions or when we have interest in certain topics. Aggregating these search data can provide us with real-time and possibly accurate information on people's behavior. In fact,...

In a recent paper [Bowman, V. J., C. S. Colantoni. 1973. Majority rule under transitivity constraints. Management Sci. 19 (9, May) 1029-1041.] Bowman and Colantoni have described an optimization model which they relate to problems of majority voting in the theory of social choice. Their...

The paper presents a new approach to solving a class of combinatorial economic allocation problems. One member of this class is known as the quadratic assignment problem. Besides presenting an algorithm to solve this problem, we will discuss in general terms the techniques for treating...