The focus of my research is the economics of information technology.  This is a broad area covering a number of different topics related to how information and information technology affects consumers, organizations and markets.   As the impact of IT has expanded, this has increasingly taken me into other areas such as the value and pricing of other types of goods, and markets more generally. The two major conferences are the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics and the NBER Digitization Program.  My specific areas of interest are:

• Information Technology and Productivity.  Developing models, methods or data sources that allow for a better understanding on how information technology creates economic value.  Most of my work here is focused on firm-level effects, although the insights can be generalized to industries or economies
• Information Technology and Organizations.  I am specifically interested in the complementary investments and business practices such as decentralized decision making, external focus, use of business analytics, and investments in human capital that enable firms to extract greater value from their IT investments.
• Data Analytics and Innovation.  Developing an understanding on how data analytics capabilities support the innovative process and how internal firm organization can influence this relationship.
• Economics of Information Systems Labor.  Better understanding how IT staff and particularly how the movement of IT staff among firms facilitates the diffusion of knowledge and increases productivity.  I am also interested in online labor markets, offshoring and the effect of the H1B Visa program on IT workers.
• Industry Studies of IT Value.  I am especially interested in the impact of IT in financial services (especially retail banks) and in the healthcare industry (especially hospitals and nursing homes)
• Pricing and Competition in Digital Goods.  I have been working on a number of issues related to bundling and pricing information goods.
• Information Technology and Consumer Decisionmaking.  I have been studying the effects of recommender systems on pricing, competition and consumer choice for some time.  My more recent work relates to using recommender system data to make inferences about product characteristics.  My prior work focused on how consumer preferences and information interacts with the use of recommender systems.
• IT Outsourcing and Enterprise Software.  I have worked on issues related to short term IT labor contracting, contract structure in enterprise software, and issues related to vendor selection in IT outsourcing agreements.
• Economic Value of Social Media.  I have a number of active projects related to understanding the value of social media and the role of complementary firm capabilities in deriving value from social media investments.

Most of my published papers can be downloaded from the Publications section of site site.  You can also get links to many papers from Google Scholar (along with some of my author statistics) or SSRN.

My current research assistant is Atiye Cansu Erol (5th year Ph.D. Student at Wharton).  Former research assistants in recent years were Bowen Lou (faculty at UConn) and Andrew Hitt (Ph.D student at Rice University MSNE program).