Research Agenda
My research centers on two complementary problems:
Designing information in AI systems and digital platforms;
Using technology-enabled information to improve operational and market decisions.
Methods: Structural Estimation · Causal Inference · Game-Theoretic Modeling · Machine Learning
Published Papers:
"The Role of Problem Specification in Crowdsourcing Contests for Design Problems: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis." [link] With Yan Huang and Damian R.Beil. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2021).
Part of INFORMS TIMES Best Dissertation Award 2021, Winner
"The Role of Feedback in Dynamic Crowdsourcing Contests: A Structural Empirical Analysis." [link] With Yan Huang and Damian R.Beil. Management Science (2022).
Part of INFORMS TIMES Best Dissertation Award 2021, Winner
IBM Service Science Best Student Paper 2019, Finalist
"A High-Dimensional Choice Model for Online Retailing." [link] With Jun Li and Dennis Zhang. Management Science (2024).
"Can Employees' Past Helping Behavior be Used to Improve Shift Scheduling? Evidence from ICU Nurses." [link] With John Silberholz, Yixin (Iris) Wang, Deena Costa and Michael Sjoding. Management Science (2025).
POMS Healthcare Best Paper Competition 2022, Third Place
INFORMS Behavioral Operations Management Section Best Working Paper 2022, Finalist
"Instrumenting While Experimenting: An Empirical Method for Competitive Pricing at Scale." [link] with Jun Li. Operations Research (2025).
INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Practice Award 2022, Finalist
INFORMS Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA) 2023, Finalist
Working Papers:
"Impact of the Invisibles: Personalized Pricing on Platform with Anonymous Users." [link] with Jieqiong (Julie) Wang, Param Vir Singh. Conditional accepted at Information Systems Research.
"Dynamic Policy Evaluation under Selective Labels: Evidence from Human and Algorithmic Decision-Making in Sequential Allocation" [link] With Ziqian Ding, Param Vir Singh. Major Revision at Information Systems Research.
Selected for the 2026 MSOM TIE Special Interest Group (SIG) Conference
"Unlocking the Value of Real-Time AI Assistance: Who Benefits, and Why?" [link] with Yao Cui and Qi Li.
"Learning in Human-AI Collaboration." [link] With Linda Argote, Param Vir Singh.
Selected Work in Progress:
My current work extends this agenda to agentic shopping, AI companions, human capability after AI assistance, and AI-supported child-welfare decisions.
"Access, Competition, and Welfare in Agentic Shopping.” With Ziqian Ding, Runshan Fu, Kannan Srinivasan.
"Love, Actually? A Randomized Experiment on AI Companion Use and Real-life Romantic Relationships." [link] With Jiaming Jiang, Zijun (June) Shi, Kannan Srinivasan, George Loewenstein.
"Optimal AI Timing in Child Welfare Screening." With Yixin (Iris) Wang, Alan Scheller-Wolf.
"Consequences of AI Assistance on Human Performance in the Absence of AI: Examination on the Role of AI Trained on Tacit and Explicit Knowledge" With Jisoo Hyun, Linda Argote
"System Load and Human-AI Teaming in Child Welfare Screening." With Yanhan (Savannah) Tang, Alan Scheller-Wolf, Justine Galbraith, Lindsey Lacey.
PhD Students & Research Mentoring:
Current students I work with:
Ziqian Ding — Business Technologies, ongoing, CMU Tepper
Jiaming Jiang — Business Technologies, ongoing, CMU Tepper
Jisoo Hyun — Organizational Behavior and Theory, ongoing, CMU Tepper
Julie Wang — Marketing, ongoing, CMU Tepper
Dissertation committees for:
Yuan Yuan — Marketing, ongoing, CMU Tepper
Behnam Mohammadi — CMU to UT Dallas, 2025
Neha . — Operations Management, 2026, CMU Tepper
