Will Wang is an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy at HKU Business School, the University of Hong Kong. He specializes in the intersection of economics, technology, business strategy, and data science. His research explores how technology, marketplaces, and algorithmic tools influence firm behavior, pricing, and strategic decision-making.

Professor Wang’s work has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review and Marketing Science. In addition to his academic research, Professor Wang previously served as Chief Economist at Unity Technologies, where he advised on company strategy and the design of its ad network. Earlier in his career at Microsoft Research, he initiated and launched Azure Spot, the company’s first dynamic pricing product for its cloud services.

Professor Wang holds a Ph.D. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Mathematics and Economics from Duke University.

AI Implementation Lab

I lead the AI² lab. We tinker with the latest technologies and business models, e.g., 

• Building an agentic economy

• AIGC and creative workflows

• Helping organizations adopt and scale AI

We welcome researchers and students with diverse backgrounds, especially those in computer science, AI/ML, economics, statistics, and operations research.

Journal Publications

• Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction

with Ulrich Doraszelski, Katja Seim, and Michael Sinkinson, American Economic Review, 2025, 115(3): 903-944.

Featured in: NPR Planet Money, Knowledge@Wharton

• Online Search and Optimal Product Rankings: An Empirical Framework

with Giovanni Compiani, Greg Lewis, and Sida Peng, Marketing Science, 2024, 43(3): 615-636.

• Unpolluted Decisions: Air Quality and Judicial Outcomes in China

with Yue Hou, Economics Letters, 2020, 194 (September): 109369.

Articles

• Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction

with Ulrich Doraszelski, Katja Seim, and Michael Sinkinson

Microeconomic Insights, April 2025.

• Azure Compute Usage Forecasting Using WaveNet: A Deep Learning Architecture and Churn Reduction Methods

with Chien-Hsun Huang, Sowmya Kumar, Emily Yan, Sachid Deshmukh, and Kaan Katircioglu

MSJAR, 2022, Vol. 17, 183-193.

• Changing the Tiger's Stripes: Reform of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises in the Penumbra of the State

with Ann Harrison, Marshall Meyer, Linda Zhao, and Minyuan Zhao

VoxEU, April 2019.

Working Papers

• Can a Tiger Change Its Stripes?  Reform of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises in the Penumbra of the State

with Ann Harrison (Haas), Minyuan Zhao (Olin), Marshall Meyer (Wharton), and Linda Zhao (Wharton)

Conditionally Accepted, International Journal of Industrial Organization

Featured in: VoxEU, NBER Digest

• Product Portfolio Choices with Product Life Cycles

Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Marketing

• Digitization and Employment in the Pandemic: Evidence from 70 Billion Emails

with Eric Auerbach (Northwestern), Hongwei Liang (Microsoft), Sida Peng (Microsoft),  Andy Wu (Harvard), and Feng Zhu (Harvard)

Reject & Resubmit, Information Systems Research

• Sticky Consumers and Cloud Welfare

with Chuqing Jin (Toulouse) and Sida Peng (Microsoft)

• Do Concealed Gun Permits Deter Crime? Dynamic Insights from State Panel Data

with Marjorie McElroy (Duke)

• New Lease on Life: Extending Product Life Cycle with Product Re-Launch

with Jin Soo Han and Subin Kim (KAIST)