Kartik Hosanagar

Amandeep Singh, Kartik Hosanagar, Aviv Nevo (Working), Network Externalities and Cross-Platform App Development in Mobile Platforms.

Amit Gandhi, Kartik Hosanagar, Amandeep Singh (Under Review), Machine Learning Instrument Variables for Causal Inference.

Jing Peng, Ashish Agarwal, Kartik Hosanagar, Raghuram Iyengar (2018), Network Overlap and Content Sharing on Social Media Platforms, Journal of Marketing Research, 55 (), pp. 571-585.

Abstract: Social media platforms allow users to connect and share content. The extent of information diffusion may depend on the characteristics of users’ connections, such as the overlap among users’ connections. We investigate the impact of network embeddedness (i.e., number of common followees, common followers, and common mutual followers between two users) on the information diffusion in directed networks. To accommodate the empirical observation that a user may receive the same information from several others, we propose a new hazard model that allows an event to have multiple causes. By analyzing the diffusion of sponsored ads on Digg and brand-authored tweets on Twitter, we find that the effect of embeddedness in directed networks varies across different types of “neighbors”. The number of common neighbors are not always conducive to information diffusion. Moreover, the effects of common followers and common mutual followers are negatively moderated by the novelty of information, which shows a boundary condition for previous finding on embeddedness in undirected networks. For marketing managers, these findings provide insights on how to target customers in a directed network at the micro level.

Chen Jin, Kartik Hosanagar, Senthil Veeraraghavan, Impact of Bilateral Rating Systems on Online Platforms.

Abstract: Platforms in the sharing economy such as Uber and Lyft adopt a bilateral rating system (BRS) that allows service providers to rate customers and to make accepting/rejecting decisions based on the customers' ratings while in the traditional online platforms (e.g., eBay), only customers have the privilege to rate the other party, i.e., a unilateral rating system (URS) is implemented. This novel feature of the rating system in the sharing economy changes the service provider's effort structure in a fundamental way, which in turn affects the pricing strategy of the platform and the welfare of service providers as well as customers. With a stylized model, we compare URS and BRS in the context of ride-sharing service to study their impact on the decisions as well as revenue/welfare of all stakeholders. Our results show that being empowered to turn down customers at the service providers' discretion (in BRS) may not always improve the economic situation of service providers. Specically, the platform could squeeze the service providers' profit margin (per order) forcing them to serve only highly rated customers and hence reducing both their transaction volume and the profit margin. This leads to a decline in the service quality compared with URS. Meanwhile, the platform could also suffer a loss from BRS when the customers' valuation to the service is high (e.g., in a city with a less developed public transportation system), as the service providers' "cherry-picking" behavior in selecting customers is particularly costly to the platform in that case. This makes the platform have to give some of its revenue back to the service providers to mitigate their over-selection behavior, which can potentially reduce the transaction volume substantially. In practice, the platform could change the decision time of drivers (to reject customers' request) based on the estimation of the customers' valuation (in each city) to the ride-sharing service and hence, switching between bilateral and unilateral rating systems effectively.

Panos Markopoulos and Kartik Hosanagar (Working), A Model of Product Design and Information Disclosure Investments.

Vibhanshu Abhishek, Kartik Hosanagar, Peter Fader (Working), The Long Road to Online Conversion: A Model of Multi-Channel Attribution.

Ashish Agarwal, Kartik Hosanagar, Michael B. Smith (Under Revision), Sponsored Search: Do Organic Results Help or Hurt.

Young Jin Lee, Yong Tan, Kartik Hosanagar (Under Revision), Do I Follow My Friends or the Crowds? Examining Informational Cascades in Online Movie Reviews.

Soumya Sen, Roch A. Guerin, Kartik Hosanagar (Under Revision), Shared or Dedicated Infrastructure? On the Impact of Reprovisioning.

Nitin Bakshi, Kartik Hosanagar, Christophe Van den Bulte (Working), New Product Diffusion with Two Interacting Segments or Products.