Time:2023/03/20 (Mon.), 15:00 -16:30 (Beijing Time)

Title:  Competing for Time: A Study of Mobile Applications

Venue: Zengxianzi Science Building 406

About the speaker:

袁晗，中山大学管理学院助理教授，美国亚利桑那大学经济学博士。袁晗博士的研究领域包括产业组织，量化营销，和数字经济。他的最新研究关注数字经济领域的竞争关系和企业决策，涉及移动应用和电子商务市场。袁晗博士的论文发表于China Economic Review和《经济管理学刊》。

Abstract:

Apps compete for limited user time regardless of their functions. I develop a discrete-continuous demand model with a binding time constraint. I estimate the model on three pairs of apps (substitutes, complements, and a pair with an ambiguous relationship) with joint app usage in China. I use updates as instruments to disentangle complementarity from correlated preferences. I recover reasonable competition patterns. I decompose competition into functional competition and budget competition, the latter of which captures the effects of a binding time constraint. Budget competition can dominate functional competition and a merger of complements can hurt consumers.