about me
I'm an assistant professor at the Research Institute for Global Value Chains, University of International Business and Economics.
Ph.D., University of Minnesota 2022
I'm an assistant professor at the Research Institute for Global Value Chains, University of International Business and Economics.
Ph.D., University of Minnesota 2022
Photo credit to Ying Wang
Office 413 Keyan Annex Bldg.
No.10 Huixin Dongjie Road
Chaoyang District 100029
Beijing China
Inferring the Prices of Intangible Investment by Digital Platforms
As publishers of online advertisements, social media platforms use viewership as an input and rely on algorithms and user data. With their main source of revenue generated from advertising services, these firms invest intensively in intangible capital such as social media websites/apps, and in data intelligence backed by first-party data. This paper proposes a quantitative theory to infer the prices and quantities of these intangible investments and to back out the latent efficiencies of production from observables in the platforms’ financial statements, household time-use patterns, and other macro variables. I find that the share of real intangible investment by digital platforms in real GDP increased from 0.24% to 9.6% 2023.
Multinational Production, Intangible Capital, and Structural Change in the U.S.
This paper assesses the contribution of technological progress and increased degree of openness on the reallocation of sectoral value-added in the U.S. using a two-country-two-sector dynamic model with multinational production (MP). I find that exogenous technological progress explained 70% of the decline in the measured value-added share of the goods sector in the U.S. from 1982 to 2012. If the model is recalibrated to abstract from multinational production, the impact of technological progress is underestimated by one percentage point, accounting for 20% of the observed decline in measured value-added share in the goods sector.