CONTACT INFORMATION

Lan-Yi Liu 

Email: lanyiliu "AT" saturn.yzu.edu.tw; lanyiliu73 "AT" gmail.com

Address: Rm 60816, College of Management, Yuan Ze University, 135 Yuan-Tung Road, Chung-Li Dist., Taoyuan City 32003, Taiwan

Axiomatic and strategic foundations for the pairwise equal splitting rule in sequencing problems with an initial queue, Volume 65, pp. 335-361, 2025. Social Choice and Welfare. (with Min-Hung Tsay and Chun-Hsien Yeh). 

Abstract

We consider the sequencing problem with an initial queue from both axiomatic and strategic perspectives. First, we show that two fairness properties, namely independence of irrelevant adjacent positions swap and balanced impact of adjacent positions swap, along with the basic properties of efficiency, budget balance, individual rationality and Pareto indifference, characterize the pairwise equal splitting rule (Curiel et al. 1989). Next, we establish a strategic justification for the rule by introducing a position-negotiation game. This game is a finite-round game, with each round consisting of a sequence of bilateral bargaining sessions. We show that there is a unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium outcome in the game; moreover, it is the agents’ net utility profile under the rule.

Optimal Licensing with Weak Patents and Litigation. July 2026, with Tsung-Sheng Tsai. Submitted.

Abstract

We study optimal licensing of weak patents in an oligopoly with two downstream firms. A patent may be invalidated after litigation, in which case the technology becomes freely available. The patent holder offers a licensing contract consisting of a fixed fee and a per-unit royalty. We compare outsider patent holders, who earn only licensing revenue, with insider patent holders, who also compete in the downstream market. In both cases, the optimal licensing regime is non-exclusive: both downstream firms accept the contract. Patent strength, however, affects the composition of payments. In the outsider case, stronger patents shift the optimal contract from royalty-only to two-part and, for small innovations, to fee-only. In the insider case, royalties remain central because they also raise rivals’ effective marginal costs; fee-only contracts do not arise. We also show that insider innovation can generate higher output when the patent is weak, whereas outsider innovation may generate higher output and welfare when the patent is strong.

No-Envy in Multi-Server Queueing Problems with an Initial Order. June 2026, with Francis Su.

Abstract

In standard queueing and sequencing problems, efficient and envy-free allocation rules exist for single-machine queues (Chun, 2006; Chun, Mitra, and Mutuswami, 2019), for queues with multiple identical machines (Mitra and Mutuswami, 2021), and for sequencing problems (De and Dube, 2026). Once agents hold an initial order, however, individual rationality requires every agent to be no worse off than under the status quo, and we show that this participation constraint, together with budget balance, precludes the existence of envy-free rules. Representing the three properties as polytopes in transfer space, we give a geometric characterization of this impossibility, showing that no allocation rule can lie in the intersection of no-envy (EF), individual rationality (IR), and budget balance (BB) polytopes. We further identify exact necessary and sufficient conditions on the waiting-cost profile under which an EF-IR-BB allocation exists on a restricted domain.

Production, Conflict, and Dictator's Optimal Favoritism. June 2024, with Tsung-Sheng Tsai. Manuscripts.

Abstract

We consider a two-stage multi-prize contest in which players choose a productive-wasteful effort allocation in Stage 2; in Stage 1, a ruler chooses a weight to enlarge the players' winning probability of investing unproductive effort. We find that the productive effort investment level is almost zero whenever the number of prizes is small. When the number of prizes is high, the ruler has a stronger incentive to encourage the players to invest in wasteful efforts. The ruler also encourages the players to invest in wasteful efforts as the player group size increases. Unfortunately, we find that in most situations the ruler encourages the contestants to invest in wasteful efforts, which explains the tinpot-like autocrats' bribery behavior and company managers' favoritism.

Congestion and Information Quality in Chinese Restaurant Games with Priority Rules. 2022 with Fang-Li Kung and Chih-Yu Wang. Manuscripts.

Abstract

We explore the trade-off between congestion and signal quality in a Chinese restaurant queuing situation. Players are heterogeneous on the information of the true distribution; players choose entry immediately or wait and see how information goes. Too many players choosing to delay decisions will cause congestion. Ideally, we expect players holding critical information to reveal it to the public to improve social efficiency. We show that players with high-quality signals have no incentive to disclose their information to players with low-quality signals, and the efficient queuing outcome is not achieved.

Cram Contests: The Impact of Multiple College Entrance Slots on Students’ Effort Levels, 2020.11.20, Microeconomic Conference, Research Center for Humanities and Social Science, Academia Sinica. Previous version: Multi-Armed Credential Contest: Evidence from College Entrance Exams in Taiwan 1983-2015. 2018. Manuscripts.

Abstract

Does the college multiple entrance programs (MEP) make students waste more resources to prepare for the exam? This paper proposes a cram contest model to analyze the impact of MEP on students’ effort levels. Students compete for one of the college admissions by paying for resources. It allows for several contest slots and differing conflict technology among students. I show that the resource allocation diverges whenever the number of entrance slots increases. The paper uses the 1996-2014 Survey of Family Income and Expenditure and the Expenditure Situation on Education data, and I find that the student’s effort level was affected by the implementation of MEP after 2002. Results show that the cram school expenditures decrease significantly after the implementation of MEP, and the reduction exceeds the positive impacts of household income and household head’s education level, which supports the model prediction.

Epistemic Group Identification. 2018. Handouts. Manuscripts.

Abstract

This paper studies group identification with the epistemic point of view. Group identification describes the solutions to classify individuals into different groups and the evolving process of a collective action rule of the members in a social group. That is, the resulting group identity is a common action rule with respect to their rival group. Under the assumption of interaction costs and results of getting to common knowledge, we construct a process of group identification. Our results show that under a finite state space, group identification can be implemented among in-group members via finite information revision steps if the two conditions hold: (1) the members communicate with each other for increasing their knowledge, and (2) there is a nonzero cost generating by the interaction between ingroup members and outsiders. Furthermore, we show that on a probability space, generalized group identification is equivalent to a discrete-time martingale process, which permits that group identification can be reached under the infinite state space.

Issues on Common Ownership and RD Competition. 2024, with Min-Hung Tsay.

College Assignments with Strategic Manipulations. 2020.