Hui Li   李 慧

My research interest is in the area of quantitative marketing. My current works investigate two-sided platform, sharing economy, online-to-offline commerce, new technology and digital product, and their impact on traditional industries. Trained as an economist, I am also interested in their social impact and policy implications. Methodologically, I prefer to select the most appropriate methodology for addressing the research question at hand. I have used various methodologies, including structural models, econometric models, casual inference, game-theoretical models, and machine learning. 

My research has been published in Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Information Systems Research and was named a finalist for the John D.C. Little Award (2019). I have been invited to present my research at leading academic institutions and government agencies including the Antitrust Division of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). I have been recognized as the MSI Young Scholar in 2021. I currently serve on the editorial board of Marketing Science.

I received my Ph.D. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania in 2015 and B.A. in Economics from Peking University in 2010. Prior to joining HKU Business School, I was an Associate Professor of Marketing at Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.

PUBLICATIONS

[1] Arslan Aziz, Hui Li, Rahul Telang, (2023) “The Consequences of Rating Inflation on Platforms: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment.” Information Systems Research, 34(2):590-608.

This paper leverages a quasi-experiment setting to study the consequences of rating inflation. The results show that although rating inflation leads to increased sales (because of increased average rating), it causes a decrease in user trial and a greater concentration of sales among popular restaurants (due to reduced rating variance).

[2] Hui Li, Yijin Kim, Kannan Srinivasan, (2022) “Market Shifts in a Sharing Economy: The Impact of Airbnb on Housing Rentals.” Management Science, 68(11):8015-8044.

This paper examines the influence of Airbnb on local long-term rental housing market and affordability and the effectiveness of various policy regulations on Airbnb. The results show that affordable units are the major sources of both the negative and positive impacts of Airbnb, as they see a larger rental supply reduction and a larger market expansion effect. Policy makers need to trade off between local renters' affordable housing concerns and local economically disadvantaged hosts' income source needs. 

[3] Hui Li, (2021) “Are E-Books a Different Channel? Multichannel Management of Digital Products.” Quantitative Marketing and Economics, 19: 179–225.

This paper studies how e-books affect existing online and offline print book channels. It shows that the e-book channel can serve as a strategic complement and enhance the pricing power of the print channels in some markets and genres.

Previously circulated as "Cannibalization or Market Expansion? The Impact of E-Books on Print Book Sales."

[4] Hui Li, Feng Zhu, (2021) “Information Transparency, Multi-Homing, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market.”  Management Science, 67(7): 4384-4407.

This paper studies how limiting information transparency affects rival's multi-homing strategy and profitability, consumers, and the industry. It identifies a seesaw effect in that reduced merchant-side multi-homing led to increased consumer-side multi-homing.

[5] Hui Li, Qiaowei Shen, Yakov Bart, (2021) “Dynamic Resource Allocation on Multi-Category Two-sided Platforms.” Management Science, 67(2): 661-1328.

This paper studies how multi-category two-sided platforms should optimally make investment decisions across two sides, multiple categories, and different time periods to scale up their business quickly and compete successfully against fast-emerging rivals. The proposed strategy is a combination of "reinforcing"  and "compensatory" rules and crucially depends on the business model (per-user or per-transaction) of the platform.

[6] Hui Li, Kannan Srinivasan, (2019) “Competitive Dynamics in the Sharing Economy: An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb and Hotels,” Marketing Science (Lead Article), 38(3): 365-391.

John D.C. Little Award (Finalist), best marketing paper published in Marketing Science, Management Science, or another INFORMS journal, 2019.

This paper studies how flexible-capacity sharing economy has fundamentally changed the way the industry accommodates demand fluctuations and how traditional fixed-capacity firms should respond.

Media coverage: INFORMS press release, INFORMS podcast, Wall Street Journal, Tepper News

[7] Hui Li, (2019) “Intertemporal Price Discrimination with Complementary Products: E-Books and E-Readers,” Management Science, 65(6): 2665-2694.

This paper illustrates how skimming/penetration pricing incentives for e-readers and harvesting/investing incentives for e-books interact and how firms can benefit from jointly dynamically pricing both products.

[8] Hui Li, Qiaowei Shen, Yakov Bart, (2018) “Local Market Characteristics and Online-to-Offline Commerce: An Empirical Analysis of Groupon,” Management Science, 64(4): 1860-1878.

This paper shows that "localness" is a unique feature of online-to-offline (O2O) commerce and that local market characteristics (e.g., travel cost and store density) can have a significant impact on the growth of O2O business.

[9] Timothy P. Derdenger, Hui Li, Kannan Srinivasan, (2018) “Firms’ Strategic Leverage of Unplanned Exposure and Planned Advertising: An Analysis in the Context of Celebrity Endorsements,” Journal of Marketing Research, 55(1): 14-34.

This paper empirically investigates how celebrity endorsements affect consumer choices during new product introductions, the roles of planned advertising and unplanned media exposure, and how firms can strategically leverage the unplanned component.

WORKING PAPERS

Jingwei Dai, Hui Li. “Online-Offline Price Difference, Consumer Fairness, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment on a Food Delivery Platform.”

Hui Li, Jian Ni, Fangzhu Yang. “Product Design Using Generative Adversarial Network: Incorporating Consumer Preference and External Data.”

Yu Feng, Hui Li, Qiaowei Shen. “The Ripple Effect of Platform Participation.”

Jiani Liu, Hui Li, Xi Li, Xin (Shane) Wang. “To Imitate or to Innovate? Content Creation in the Era of the Creator Economy.”

Hui Li, Jiaqi (Joseph) Xu, Sridhar Tayur. “Online-to-Offline Platforms: Per-Use versus Subscription Pricing.” 

This paper studies two commonly observed business models for online-to-offline (O2O) platforms, per-use (e.g., Groupon) and subscription pricing (e.g., MoviePass). The results help diagnose why existing O2O platforms face problems in practice and how managers should select business models given various market conditions.

REVIEW

Editorial Review Board: Marketing Science

Referee: Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Information System Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, RAND Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Economic Journal, Quantitative Economics, Alden G. Clayton Dissertation Competition

AWARDS AND HONORS

• Marketing Science Service Award (2023)

• Xerox Junior Faculty Chair, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University  (2021-2022)

• MSI Young Scholar, Marketing Science Institute (2021)

• John D.C. Little Award (Finalist) (2019)

• Carnegie Bosch Junior Chair, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University  (2018-2021)

• Lave-Weil Faculty Research Prize, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University  (2017)

• William Polk Carey Prize for Outstanding Economics Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania (2016)

• Paul Taubman Memorial Prize for Empirical Economics Research, University of Pennsylvania (2015)