In the last two decades, Internet technologies, such as cloud computing, mobile communications, social media, and big data analytics, have brought tremendous changes to our society and reshaped the business in various industries. Specifically, the mushrooming innovations in the financial area...

This dissertation explores several aspects of the theory in industrial organization.The first chapter builds a model with two cost asymmetric firms who not only have Cournot competition in the spot market but also have the opportunity to trade forward contracts. It is shown that with forward...

This dissertation looks at several issues in designing an optimal skill-basedconsumer contest (SBCC). Consumer product (or service) companies, such asonline entertainment providers, often use SBCCs to promote the consumption oftheir products (or services). The main objective of a SBCC is to...