Yitian (Sky) Liang. Education. Research Interests. Working Papers. Work in Progress

Transcription

1 Yitian (Sky) Liang University of British Columbia +1 (604) Permanent Residence of Canada Education Ph.D., Business Administration (Marketing) University of British Columbia, (Expected) M.S., Statistics University of British Columbia, M.S., Applied Economics City University of Hong Kong, B.S., Statistics Jinan University, Research Interests Empirical Industrial Organization Online Gaming Industry, Virtual World Pricing: P2P Platform, Uniform vs. Differential Pricing, Movie, Daily Deal Government Policy Intervention Health Marketing Working Papers Economic Design in the Virtual World: the Fee Structure and Sales Mechanism in the P2P Trading Market in Online Video Games (Job Market Paper) Jason Ho, Yitian (Sky) Liang, Charles Weinberg, Jing Yan. An Empirical Study of Uniform and Differential Pricing in the Movie Theatrical Market (2 nd Review at Journal of Marketing Research) Ping Xiao, Yitian (Sky) Liang, Xinlei (Jack) Chen, Wei Lu. The Effect of the Government's Subsidy Program: Accessibility Beyond Affordability (Under Revision) Chunhua Wu, Yitian (Sky) Liang, Xinlei (Jack) Chen. Is Daily Deal a Good Deal for Merchants? An Empirical Analysis of Economic Value in the Daily Deal Market (Under Revision) Work in Progress Sleep Deprivation and Its Impact on Consumer Decision Making Joint with Gerald Gorn, Charles Weinberg Uncertainty and Learning in the In-Vitro-Fertilization Market Joint with Xinlei (Jack) Chen, Yuxin Chen 1

2 Conference and Talks Quantitative Marketing and Economics October, 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy July, 2015 University of California, Berkeley 12th Marketing Dynamic Conference June, 2015 Tsinghua University, Beijing UBC - UW Annual Marketing Conference May, 2015 University of British Columbia, Vancouver "Market Structure, Pricing Policy and Sales Mechanism of C2C Exchange Platforms: An Empirical Analysis in Online Video Games" UBC - UW Annual Marketing Conference May, 2013 University of British Columbia, Vancouver "Quantify the Effects of the Government's Subsidy Program" Teaching Experiences Instructor: Marketing Management COMM/BUSI 465 (Undergraduate), Spring 2014, Evaluation: 4.5/5 TA: Elementary Statistics for Applications (Undergraduate), Grants, Honors and Awards Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Doctoral Fellowships, Killam Doctoral Scholarship, Four Year Fellowship, University of British Columbia, Quantitative Marketing and Structural Econometrics Workshop Fellow, Durham 2013 Chinese National Scholarship, Jinan University, 2006 Other Research Experiences "Challenge Cup" - Chinese National College Students Academic Research Competition, 2006 National Second Prize National Electronic Mathematical Modeling Contest, 2005 National Third Prize Programming Skill Matlab, R, SAS, SQL, LaTeX 2

3 Selected Courses Microeconomics I Microeconomics II Econometrics I Econometrics II Topics in Applied Econometrics Economic Application of Game Theory Market Structure and Business Behavior Marketing Quantitative Seminar Marketing Consumer Behavior Seminar Topics in Numerical Computation Statistical Theory I Statistical Theory II Asymptotic Theory Bayesian Statistics Michael Peters Sergei Severinov Kevin Song Vadim Marmer Hiro Kasahara Hao Li Paul Schrimpf Charles Weinberg/Xinlei (Jack) Chen/Ting Zhu JoAndrea Hoegg Chen Greif Jiahua Chen Lang Wu Jiahua Chen Paul Gustafson References Xinlei (Jack) Chen (Co-Supervisor) Professor of Marketing Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business xlchen@ckgsb.edu.cn +86 (10) ext Charles Weinberg (Co-Supervisor) Professor of Marketing charles.weinberg@sauder.ubc.ca +1 (604) Chunhua Wu (Dissertation Committee Member) Assistant Professor of Marketing chunhua.wu@sauder.ubc.ca +1 (604)

4 Research Abstracts Economic Design in the Virtual World: the Fee Structure and Sales Mechanism in the P2P Trading Market in Online Video Games Job Market Paper The Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games (often referred as online video games), in which players interact with each other in a virtual world, generate significant economic value and are growing at a rapid rate. The business model in this market has shifted from pay-to-play to free-to-play, in which firms earn revenue from selling virtual products and collecting fees from the player-to-player (P2P) trading market in the game. Given the importance of this industry, it is surprising that no research has yet studied the business model in this market. This paper examines fee collection from the P2P market, which is a more economically interesting context than sales of virtual products. Specifically, we focus on two economically relevant dimensions, fee structure (listing fee vs. commission) and sales mechanism (fixed-price posting vs. auction). A structural model is developed to capture players' trading behavior while accommodating two unique features in this context: the homogenous product with price variation and the endogenous selling and buying decisions. The model is empirically challenging due to a common industry feature: large number of long-lived players with unobserved heterogeneity (in their preferences). This is resolved by making an assumption that players don't use their identities as information to form the sale probability, which is innocuous when there is a large number of small players. We prove the existence of equilibrium under this assumption and propose a computationally light two-step estimation procedure. Through counterfactuals, we find there is a trade-off between listing fee and commission, e.g., the former generates higher fee collection with substantially lower listing volume and slightly lower transaction volume. As a preliminary analysis, we also find there is a trade-off between fixed-price posting and English auction, i.e., auction generates higher fee collection and substantially higher listing volume but significantly lower transaction volume. We explore the underlying mechanisms and offer managerial implications. An Empirical Study of Uniform and Differential Pricing in the Movie Theatrical Market Jason Ho, Yitian (Sky) Liang, Charles Weinberg, Jing Yan. (2 nd round review at Journal of Marketing Research) Movies vary widely in appeal, quality and cost and therefore might be expected to each charge a different price. Multiplexes, however, typically charge the same price for all movies, except for such premium formats as 3D. This has puzzled managers and researchers. Because of data limitations, minimal empirical work directly addresses this issue. In Hong Kong, however, prices vary both within and across multiplexes. Using daily ticket prices and attendance by theater and title, we empirically examine the potential gains from differentiated movie-specific prices by theaters as well as the increasingly common two-tier (3D/non-3D) uniform pricing, as compared to a full uniform pricing strategy in which a theater charges the same price for all its movies regardless of format. Our results show that differential pricing leads to higher profits than the two-tier uniform pricing practice, but that the improvement is limited. In contrast, the gains are substantial when compared to the full uniform pricing strategy, suggesting that only minimal differentiation (3D/non-3D) may obtain most of the gains available from fully differentiated prices. 4

5 The Effect of the Government's Subsidy Program: Accessibility Beyond Affordability Ping Xiao, Yitian (Sky) Liang, Xinlei (Jack) Chen, Wei Lu. (Under Revision) Rural consumers face not only the challenge of affordability but also the problem of limited accessibility. Little research has studied whether a government s subsidy program could effectively address these issues. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness and the design of a large-scale subsidy program, Household Electric Appliances Going to the Countryside, offered by the Chinese government. We consider two effects of the subsidy: lowering the retail price to enable the product more affordable to consumers, and encouraging firms to expand their distribution network to make products more accessible to consumers. We build upon a dynamic model of an oligopoly, following the tradition of Ericson and Pakes (1995). Conditional on the model estimates, we conduct counterfactual analysis to evaluate the effects of the program. We find that the program helps significantly increase the size of firms distribution network beyond increasing the social welfare of its customers. Moreover its effectiveness could be improved by applying a more optimal subsidy rate. In addition, we show that subsidizing consumers is generally more effective than subsidizing firms. Is Daily Deal a Good Deal for Merchants? An Empirical Analysis of Economic Value in the Daily Deal Market Chunhua Wu, Yitian (Sky) Liang, Xinlei (Jack) Chen. (Under Revision) The daily deals platform has become an important format in the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. However, questions have been raised over whether merchants really benefit from participating in daily deals, with some evidence suggesting that a significant number of merchants are losing money from them. In this paper, we address this question by quantifying the economic value of daily deals using a structural approach. Using data from the Chinese daily deals market, we find that merchants not only profit from daily deals, but also take the biggest share of the economic value created by them. However, the gain mainly comes from future revenue, with merchants typically incurring a loss during the promotion period. We also find that competition among platforms increases the merchant s share of the economic value. Finally, we show that the competition in the current market is close to the optimal situation from a policy maker s point of view. 5