Bin Hu

University of Texas at Dallas | UTD · Naveen Jindal School of Management

We consider the optimal operating policies of a free-to-play multiplayer game with a premium subscription to maximize its lifetime operating profit. Accounting for social comparisons between free and premium players, we model the game attracting or losing players with a hybrid of the Bass diffusion model and the replicator equation in evolutionary...

In this paper, we study how an on-demand service platform could improve its performance through managing user conduct. In such a platform, service providers may reject certain platform-proposed service requests, and their responses, in turn, incentivize users to adjust their conduct. We develop an evolutionary game theory model of user conduct and...

When an innovator outsources the manufacturing of an innovative product to a contract manufacturer (CM) which is also a competitor in the end market, the potential innovation spillover may be a serious concern. In this paper we study an innovator’s outsourcing decision under spillover risks with an emphasis on the ex‐ante uncertain values of innova...

Competing technologies in emerging industries create uncertainties that discourage supplier investments. Open technology can induce supplier investments, but may also lead to intensified future competition. In this paper, we study competing manufacturers' open-technology strategies. We show that despite the risk of intensifying future competition,...

Competing technologies in emerging industries create uncertainties that discourage supplier investments. Open technology can induce supplier investments, but may also lead to intensified future competition. In this paper, we study competing manufacturers' open-technology strategies. We show that despite the risk of intensifying future competition,...

This paper studies an upstream supplier who quotes prices for a key component to multiple sellers that compete for an end-buyer's indivisible contract. At most one of the supplier's quotes may result in downstream contracting and hence produce revenue for her. We characterize the supplier's optimal price-quoting strategies and show that she will us...

Consider two buyers facing uncertain demands who need to purchase a common critical component from a powerful sole-source supplier. If the two buyers pool their demands and purchase from the supplier as a single entity, will they necessarily earn higher profits than purchasing separately? We show that when a powerful supplier extracts profits from...

This paper studies an optimal procurement mechanism for a newsvendor-like problem where the buyer's (newsvendor's) purchase price of the supplies is not fixed, but determined through interaction with candidate suppliers. The buyer has priors on the suppliers' costs but does not know their costs exactly. Recent literature has shown how the buyer can...