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Research Affiliate
Song Lin
Associate Professor, Department of Marketing
Song Lin is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include product and pricing policies, platform design, innovation, advertising, and information economics.
Publications
Competitive Information Disclosure by Multiple Senders
By Pak Hung Au, Keiichi Kawai
Publications
Competitive Disclosure of Correlated Information
By Pak Hung Au, Keiichi Kawai
Working Paper Series
Settling Lawsuits with Pirates
A firm licenses a product to overlapping generations of heterogeneous consumers. Consumers may purchase the product, pirate/steal it, or forego it. Higher consumer types enjoy higher gross benefits and are caught stealing at a higher rate. In this framework, the firm may commit to an out-of-court settlement policy that is “soft” on pirates, so high-types purchase the product and low-types steal the product until caught and subsequently settle. Settlement contracts, which include both cash payments and licenses for future product use, facilitate price discrimination.
By Xinyu Hua, Kathryn E. Spier
Working Paper Series
Merger Analysis in the App Economy: An Empirical Model of Ad-Sponsored Media
This paper proposes a new model of imperfect competition of ad-sponsored media, which can sell “free” products, for a merger analysis applicable to the mobile app industry. To analyze developers' monetizing with both price and advertising in an app, we consider a consumer who faces both budget and time constraints. Moreover, to catch up with newly created and quickly redefined markets, we automate the conversion from in-text product descriptions to numerical product attributes by combining word embedding and dimension reduction techniques.
By Kohei Kawaguchi (Sunada), Toshifumi Kuroda, Susumu Sato
Working Paper Series
Attraction Versus Persuasion
We consider a model of oligopolistic competition in a market with search frictions, in which competing firms with products of unknown quality advertise how much information a consumer’s visit will glean. We characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium of this game, which, due to the countervailing incentives of attraction and persuasion, generates a payoff function for each firm that is linear in the firm’s realized effective value.
By Pak Hung Au, Mark Whitmeyer
Working Paper Series
Search Algorithm, Repetitive Information, and Sales on Online Platforms
A prominent feature of online sales is that buyers rely on the search tools offered by platforms to process information when searching for products. The authors develop a model that captures how the search algorithm affects buyers' search processes, which further influences market equilibrium and welfare. If a platform adopts a highly unequal search algorithm, buyers are likely to obtain repetitive information about a small group of sellers, which causes buyers to consider fewer options and suppresses competition.
By Yangguang Huang, Yu Xie
Working Paper Series
International Protection of Consumer Data
We study the international protection of consumer data in a model where data from product sales generate additional revenue to firms but disutility to consumers. When data usage lacks transparency, a firm suffers a commitment problem and overuses consumer data. As transparency increases, the firm may adjust prices inefficiently across countries with different privacy preferences.
By Xinyu Hua, Yongmin Chen, Keith E. Maskus
Conference, Symposium, Forum, Seminar, Lecture, Talk
Panel Discussion on Challenges Facing Competition Policy in Hong Kong and Asia