Thesis Title: "Essays on Digital Economics"
Committee:Daniel Arce (Chair), Catherine Tucker, Anne M. Burton, Anton Sobolev
Methodology: Causal Inference, Econometrics, Observational Data, Game Theory
Topics: Health IT, Cybersecurity, Privacy, AI
Working Papers
Abstract:
This study quantifies the effects of mergers on hospital data breaches, disrupting care, leading to fatal consequences, violating privacy rights, and incurring significant costs to remedy. Using U.S. hospital data over ten years, I provide causal evidence that data breach rates double during hospital mergers. The results suggest high pre-signing online visibility contributes to the doubled data breach rates. Increased online visibility makes mergers more noticeable to malicious actors and raises external threats. Post-signing information system integration leads to technical challenges, which is another factor for data breach risks. Effective management can mitigate the data breach risks in certain types of hospitals. By contrast, I find no evidence that the experience or resources of large multi-hospital health systems reduce the data breach risks. The study discusses the implications of predicting and managing data breach risks for hospital managers, health IT leaders, and healthcare authorities.
Publications
Article in Advance, Information Systems Research
Abstract:
Cloud services exist under a shared security environment with a dynamic nature; users trade fixed costs for variable costs over time and both cloud service providers (CSP) and users contribute to overall security. We investigate the nature of shared security in a dynamic game where users' security contribution takes into account both their users as well as competition with other CSPs. The Markov Perfect Equilibrium reveals the long-term time patterns of security of the cloud. In particular, we identify a novel form of time-path strategic complementary between usage and a CSP's Markov state of security. This implies cloud security is an unusual form of impure public good whereby individual contributions bolstering a CSP's security endow a selective incentive (private benefit) on others, rather than on the contributor alone. Since this increases usage, CSP vulnerability increases over time. At the same time, CSP competition on security may lead to both welfare improvements for users and lock-in.
Selected Works in Progress
Mergers and Data: Evidence from Healthcare (with Amalia Miller and Catherine Tucker)
Merger Selection and Cyber Risk: Evidence from Panel Data Analysis
Fellowships, Grants, Honors, and Awards
WEIS’23 Best Paper Award,
UC Berkeley SLMath Algorithms, Approximation, and Learning in Market and Mechanism Design invited attendee,
Charles C. McKinney Scholarship,
DFW Research Data Center Grant ($10,000),
NBER 2023 Workshop of Digital Economics invited attendee,
NBER 2023 Digital Economics Tutorial invited attendee,
Irving J. Hoch Scholarship,
Office of Graduate Education Research funding,
NSF graduate student travel grant,
Alfred P Sloan Foundation student travel grant,
Betty Gifford Johnson Travel Award,
NBER 2022 Fall Economics of Privacy Tutorial invited attendee
Services
Information System Research, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Cybersecurity Reviewer,
ASHEcon 2024 discussant, WEIS'24 Session Chair,
ASHEcon 2023 Newsletter writer
Talk with Nan: If you are a MBA or EMBA student from Sloan, schedule a meeting to talk about your Fall 2024 class. I am very happy to talk about Health IT and Cloud too.
Teaching Award: The University of Texas at Dallas President's Teaching Excellence Award, 2023
Affiliation:INFORMS Early Career Teachers’ Network (ECTN)
Teaching Experiences
Instructor of Record, ECON3310 Intermediate Microeconomic Theory Fall 2022, Spring 2022, and Fall 2021
Average Evaluation: 4.81/5.0; GPA: 3.30/4.0
Comets to the Core Assessment Reviewer Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Teaching Assistant:ECON4385/ECON5397 Business and Economic Forecasting (R), ECON2302 Principles of Microeconomics, ECON3315 Sports Economics, ECON2301 Principles of Macroeconomics, ECON3312 Money and Banking, ECON2303 Principle of Microeconomics, ECON 6302 Macroeconomic Theory (PhD Core)
Courses Designed
Game Theory with Computer Science Applications, Ph.D. research seminar on Health Digitization, Governance and Auditing Essentials for Cyber Security, Responsible Artificial Intelligence
Teaching Certificates
Graduate Teaching Certificate (GTC) and the Advanced Graduate Teaching Certificate (AGTC) from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at UTD