Government subsidies to the manufacturing sector are popular in developing countries. This paper studies the long-run effects of a large-scale regional industrialization campaign in China, known as the “Third Front" (TF) construction. Motivated by national defense considerations, the TF...

Online platforms have the unique ability of offering virtually unlimited assortments. However, they often assume frictionless conditions in the purchase process which may not always hold in practice. We study the impact of heterogeneous search costs on the formation of consideration sets, and...

To wield a flexible self-scheduled supply to match the ever-changing demand and maintain market shares, ride-sharing platforms such as Uber and Didi strive to keep more registered drivers active on the road, especially during peak hours in which the demand tends to be the highest. Platforms have...

Host-generated property images as a visual channel reveal substantial information about properties. Selecting proper images to display can lead to higher demand and increased rental revenue. In this paper, we define, estimate and optimize the impacts of Airbnb photos on customers' renting...