Work in Progress

Digital Networks

Regulating Digital Platform Monopolies: The Case of Facebook - 2022

We develop a model of platform participation in the presence of heterogenous network effects and demand, prove some analytical results about the model, and then calibrate it on survey data for Facebook. We simulate the impact of different regulatory reforms.
Joint with Avi Collis

Working Paper Available

Measuring How University Students Form and Value Instagram Connections

Funded by a Chapman Seed Grant, we study the network of connections on Instagram, measure which types of connections are most valued, and find evidence of non-linear returns to connections, in an incentive compatible lab study.

Joint with Avi Collis

Extended Abstract Available

Measuring the Value of Connections Across Platforms

We measure heterogeneity in what types of connections drive value on four social media platforms.

Joint with Sinan Aral, Avi Collis and Christos Nicolaides

Draft Working Paper Available

Other Digital Network
Work-in-Progress

Blitzscaling and Unravelling - 2023

Examining the role of the time endurance of network effects in dynamic platform pricing decisions.

Do Startups Invert? API Networks and Startup Exits - 2022

Examining the productivity effect of API use and network strategy on startup success.

Joint with Jonathan Hersh and Marshall Van Alstyne

Technology as Strategy - 2022

Practitioner piece on the implications of our API research.

Joint with Jonathan Hersh and Marshall Van Alstyne

Power Law Distributions in Social Media - 2023

What determines the distribution of followers and attention in the upper tail of social media platform accounts?

Joint with Ruyu Chen and Yikai Li

Automation, Skill Biased Technological Change, and the Macroeconomics and Business of AI

Simulating Endogenous Global Automation - 2023

This paper develops a 17-region, 3-skill group, overlapping generations, computable general equilibrium model to evaluate the global consequences of automation. In our baseline scenario, automation has a moderate effect on regional outputs and a small effect on world interest rates. However, it has a major impact on inequality, both wage inequality within regions and per capita GDP inequality across regions.

Joint with Victor Ye, Laurence Kotlikoff and Guillermo Lagarda

Working paper available, under review

Robots are Us: Some Economics of Human Automation - 2023

Automation, in the form of AI trained through supervised and unsupervised machine learning, may lead to a boom-bust cycle in welfare, inter-generationally. Under certain conditions, future generations can be left worse off.
Joint with Laurence Kotlikoff, Guillermo Lagarda, and Jeff Sachs

Working paper available, under review

Digital Abundance and Scarce Architects - 2022

Digital labor and capital can be reproduced much more cheaply than its traditional forms. But if labor and capital are becoming more abundant, what is constraining growth? We posit a third factor, ‘architecture’, that cannot be duplicated by digital technologies.

Joint with Erik Brynjolfsson and Guillaume Saint-Jacques

Working paper available

Skill Biased Technological Change Within and Across Firms - 2019

Using LinkedIn resume records, BLS OES data, and Compustat employee counts, we estimate occupational employment for publicly traded US firms from 2000 through 2016. We find that faster employment growth among firms that disproportionately employ non-routine workers is the most important cause of SBTC, followed by within firm occupational mix rebalancing.

Joint with Daniel Rock and Guillermo Lagarda

Working paper available

Additional Automation and AI Work in Progress

I am working with Victor Ye and a team of other researchers to further develop the global simulation model in "Simulating Endogenous Global Automation." We will apply the model to understand the implications of UBI and other fiscal policy responses in different technological scenarios. We also plan to bring back-testing to this class of models for the first time to measure the reliability of our finds.

Joint with Victor Ye

I am collaborating on an NSF grant proposal with a team of researchers to study the productivity and distributive implications of collaborative robots. Our proposal was rated "competitive" in 2023, and we will be resubmitting in 2024.

Draft proposal available upon request

Superstars at Work: Increasing Returns to Scale Across Occupations - 2023

Joint with Erik Brynjolfsson and Ruyu Chen

Extended abstract available

The Innovation/Complexity Tradeoff: How Bottlenecks Create Superstars and Constrain Growth - 2022

Investigating the tradeoff between increased maximum productivity and increased production fragility in implementing more complex production processes, and the implications for firms and the economy.

Joint with Erik Brynjolfsson

Working paper available

Identifying the Multiple Skills in Skill Biased Technological Change - 2019

Joint with Erik Brynjofsson, Frank MacCrory, and George Westerman

Working paper available

Robots: Curse or Blessing? A Basic Framework - 2015

Joint with Jeff Sachs and Guillermo Lagarda

Working paper available

General Information Systems Research

Learning from COVID-19: Hospital IT, Clinical Trials and Improvement in Health Outcomes - 2023

During the COVID-19 pandemic, US deaths per case decreased from 7.46\% in April 2020 to 1.76\% in April 2021. Health information technologies in hospitals helped them learn and implement best practices.

Joint with Avi Collis, Christos Nicolaides, and Indranil Bardhan

Working paper available, under review

Additional General Information Systems Research

Speedruns and the Science of Science - 2023

Joint with Kai Zhu and Kyle Myers

Essay on how digital technologies are increasing the importance of power-law distributions in the economy

Joint with Erik Brynjolfsson

IT and the Age of Leaders - 2023

Joint with Frank Li

Other Research in Progress

70 Years of US Corporate Profits - 2018

We extend Barkai (2016) and measure capital costs and profits over the period 1946–2015. The profit share is declining from 1946 to the early 1980s and has been increasing since. As a share of gross value added, profits today are higher than they were in 1984, but lower than their value in the years after World War II. Alternative measures of profits show similar trends.

Joint with Simcha Barkai, under review

Work in Progress

Digital Networks

Regulating Digital Platform Monopolies: The Case of Facebook - 2022

Measuring How University Students Form and Value Instagram Connections

Measuring the Value of Connections Across Platforms

Other Digital Network Work-in-Progress

Automation, Skill Biased Technological Change, and the Macroeconomics and Business of AI

Simulating Endogenous Global Automation - 2023

Robots are Us: Some Economics of Human Automation - 2023

Digital Abundance and Scarce Architects - 2022

Skill Biased Technological Change Within and Across Firms - 2019

Additional Automation and AI Work in Progress

General Information Systems Research

Learning from COVID-19: Hospital IT, Clinical Trials and Improvement in Health Outcomes - 2023

Additional General Information Systems Research

Other Research in Progress

70 Years of US Corporate Profits - 2018

Simulating Business Cash Flow Taxation: An Illustration Based on the Better Way Corporate Tax Reform -2017

Other Digital Network
Work-in-Progress