题目： "Local Restaurants’ Advertising Response to A Better Online Rating: A Regression Discontinuity Design"

报告人: Ying Lei (Assistant Professor, GSM of Peking University)

报告时间：2017年5月9日（周二） 1：30 pm

地点：国际经管学院会议室（诚明楼三层）

主办方：国际经济管理学院

摘要：

This paper analyzes the advertising spending patterns of US local restaurants that have different ratings on Yelp.com using a regression discontinuity design. Rating information on Yelp includes display ratings and review distributions. Yelps rounding algorithm creates a discontinuity in display ratings. Therefore, using a regression discontinuity design, I can identify the causal effect of a higher display rating on local restaurants advertising spending. I find that, for restaurants with ratings above 3, there is a significantly negative effect of display rating (i.e. Yelp stars) on advertising. An extra half-star on Yelp causes restaurant yearly advertising spending to reduce by about one-third, which is more than 5k dollars on average. However, when display ratings are constant between two thresholds, a higher (raw) average rating is associated with slowly increasing advertising. This is the first paper that distinguishes the raw average rating and the rounded display rating in the analysis of firms’ strategic response to word of mouth.

Biography

雷莹于2008年取得中国人民大学经济学学士学位，于2010年取得纽约大学（New York University）经济学硕士学位，于2016年取得波士顿大学（Boston University）经济学博士学位。2016年秋至今任教于光华管理学院市场营销学系。目前研究兴趣包括广告，消费者评价，公司竞争策略等。研究领域包括应用博弈论，实证产业经济学，信息经济学，以及平台理论等。个人网页地址：http://www.gsm.pku.edu.cn/faculty/ylei.html