Yan Chen (陈岩) - SI, University of Michigan

Daniel Kahneman Collegiate Professor of Information

School of Information

University of Michigan

Research Professor, Research Center for Group Dynamics

Institute for Social Research

University of Michigan

Distinguished Visiting Professor

School of Economics and Management

Tsinghua University (清华大学)

Research Summary:

Yan Chen is the Daniel Kahneman Collegiate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She also holds an appointment as a research professor with the U-M Institute for Social Research. Her research interests are in behavioral and experimental economics, market and mechanism design, and public economics. She conducts both theoretical and experimental research.

Working Papers:

Putting Teams into the Gig Economy: A Field Experiment at a Ride-sharing Platform.
Wei Ai, Yan Chen, Qiaozhu Mei, Jieping Ye, and Lingyu Zhang. 2021. (pdf)
Motivating Experts to Contribute to Digital Public Goods: A Personalized Field Experiment on Wikipedia.
Yan Chen, Rosta Farzan, Robert Kraut, Iman YeckehZaare and Ark Fangzhou Zhang. 2020. (pdf)

Selected Publications:

Behavioral Market Design

Information Acquisition and Provision in School Choice: An Experimental Study.
Yan Chen and YingHua He. Journal of Economic Theory 197: 105345, 2021. (pdf)
Information Acquisition and Provision in School Choice: A Theoretical Investigation.
Yan Chen and YingHua He. Economic Theory, pp 1-35. July 2021. (pdf)
Market Design, Human Behavior and Management
Yan Chen, Peter Cramton, John A. List, and Axel Ockenfels. Management Science 67(9): 5317-5348. 2021.
An Empirical Evaluation of Chinese College Admissions Reforms through a Natural Experiment (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Yan Chen, Ming Jiang and Onur Kesten. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(50): 31696-31705. 2020.
Chinese College Admissions and School Choice Reforms: An Experimental Study
Yan Chen and Onur Kesten. Games and Economic Behavior 2019.
Chinese College Admissions and School Choice Reforms: A Theoretical Analysis.
Yan Chen and Onur Kesten. Journal of Political Economy 2017 (Manuscript, Online Appendix)
Matching in the Large: An Experimental Study. (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Yan Chen, Ming Jiang, Onur Kesten, Stephane Robin and Min Zhu. Games and Economic Behavior 2018.
Decentralized Matching and Social Segregation.
Yan Chen, Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher and Peter Morgan. Games and Economic Behavior 2015. (pdf, Instructions, Algorithm)
School Choice: An Experimental Study.
Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez Journal of Economic Theory 127 (2006): 202-231. (pdf, DATA in excel, DATA in excel: contains readme sheet; DATA in ascii) (Instructions: Boston, Gale-Shapley, Top Trading Cycles)
An Experimental Study of House Allocation Mechanisms.
Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez. Economics Letters vol. 83, Issue 1 (April 2004): 137-140. (pdf, data)
Improving Efficiency of On-Campus Housing: An Experimental Study. (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez. American Economic Review vol. 92, no. 5 (2002): 1669-86. (pdf, data)

Social Identity and Teams

Social Identity, Group Behavior and Teams.
Charness, Gary and Yan Chen. Annual Review of Economics 12:1, 691-713. 2020.
Does Team Competition Increase Pro-Social Lending? Evidence from Online Microfinance.
Roy Chen, Yan Chen, Yang Liu and Qiaozhu Mei. Games and Economic Behavior. 2017. (pdf)
Recommending Teams Promotes Prosocial Lending in Online Microfinance. (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Wei Ai, Roy Chen, Yan Chen, Qiaozhu Mei, and Webb Phillips. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2016.
Which Hat to Wear? Impact of Natural Identities on Coordination and Cooperation. (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Yan Chen, Sherry Xin Li, Tracy Xiao Liu and Margaret Shih. Games and Economic Behavior 84: 58-86. March 2014. (pdf)
The Potential of Social Identity for Equilibrium Selection (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Roy Chen and Yan Chen. American Economic Review 101 (6): 2562--2589. October 2011. (pdf: instructions and survey in appendices.)
Group Identity and Social Preferences (data deposit at open ICPSR)
(previously circulated under the title, Measuring Identity.) Yan Chen and Sherry Xin Li. American Economic Review 99:1 (March 2009): 431-457. (pdf, Supplemental Material: including experimental instructions and survey.)

Digital Public Goods and Economics of Information Technology

Real or bogus: Predicting susceptibility to phishing with economic experiments (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Chen, Yan, Iman Yeckehzaare and Ark Fangzhou Zhang. PLOS ONE 13(6): e0198213. 2018.
Social Comparisons, Status and Driving Behavior.
Yan Chen, Fangwen Lu and Jinan Zhang. Journal of Public Economics 2017.
A Day without a Search Engine: An Experimental Study of Online and Offline Search.
Yan Chen, Grace YoungJoo Jeon and Yong-Mi Kim. Experimental Economics 17 (4): 512-536. December 2014. (pdf)
Crowdsourcing with All-Pay Contests: A Field Experiment on Taskcn.
Liu, Tracy Xiao, Jiang Yang, Lada Adamic and Yan Chen. Management Science 60 (8): 2020--2037. August 2014. (pdf)
Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design.
Robert E Kraut, Paul Resnick, with Sara Kiesler, Moira Burke, Yan Chen, Nikki Kittur, Joseph Konstan, Yuqing Ren, John Riedl. MIT Press. 2012. (pdf)
Social Comparisons and Contributions to Online Communities: A Field Experiment on MovieLens (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Yan Chen, Max Harper, Joseph Konstan and Sherry Xin Li. American Economic Review 100(4): 1358-1398. September 2010. (pdf)
Knowledge Market Design: A Field Experiment on Google Answers.
Yan Chen, Teck-Hua Ho and Yong-Mi Kim. Journal of Public Economics Theory 2010. (pdf)
Re-examining Price as a Predictor of Answer Quality in an Online Q&A Site.
Jeon, Grace YoungJoo, Yong-Mi Kim and Yan Chen. Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010 (CHI 2010). Atlanta, Georgia, USA. April 10 - 15, 2010. Pages: 325-328.
Online Fund-raising Mechanisms: A Field Experiment.
Yan Chen, Xin Li and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy vol. 5, Issue 2, Article 4, 2006. (pdf: instruction in appendix.)
An Economic Model of User Rating in an Online Recommender System.
Maxwell Harper, Xin Li, Yan Chen and Joseph Konstan. Springer's LNAI series, UM 2005 User Modeling: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference 127 (2006): 202-231. (pdf, DOI) This paper is written for the computer science audience.

Methodology and biology

Best practices in replication: a case study of common information in coordination games. (data deposit at openICPSR)
Chen, Roy, Yan Chen and Yohanes E. Riyanto. Experimental Economics 2020.
Hunger and the gender gap.
Chen, Yan, Ming Jiang and Erin Krupka. Experimental Economics 22 (4): 885 - 917. 2019.
Online Field Experiments: A Selective Survey of Methods.
Yan Chen and Joseph Konstan. Journal of the Economics Science Association 2015. (pdf)
Why Can't a Woman Bid More Like a Man?
Yan Chen, Peter Katuscak and Emre Ozdenoren. Games and Economic Behavior 77 (1): 181--213. January 2013. (pdf: instructions and survey in appendices.)
Directional behavioral spillover and cognitive load effects in multiple repeated games.
Liu, Tracy Xiao, Jenna Bednar, Yan Chen and Scott Page. Experimental Economics 22 (3): 705 - 734. 2019.
Behavioral Spillovers and Cognitive Load in Multiple Games: An Experimental Study
Jenna Bednar, Yan Chen, Tracy Xiao Liu and Scott Page. Games and Economic Behavior 74(1): 12--31. January 2012. (pdf)

Mechanism Design and Learning

Scheduling with Package Auctions.
Kan Takeuchi, John C. Lin, Yan Chen and Tom Finholt. Experimental Economics (2010) 13: 476-499. (pdf, Vickrey SS high information, Vickrey SR high information, Vickrey RR high information, iBEA SS high information, iBEA SR high information, iBEA RR high information. We omit instructions for the low information treatments, as they are identical to that of the corresponding high information treatments, except that the section, "The automated bidders", is deleted.)
Multi-Object Auctions with Package Bidding: An Experimental Comparison of iBEA and Vickrey.
Yan Chen and Kan Takeuchi. Games and Economic Behavior 68 (2): 557-579. March 2010. (pdf, Instructions)
Sealed Bid Auctions with Ambiguity: Theory and Experiments.
Yan Chen, Peter Katuscak and Emre Ozdenoren Journal of Economic Theory 136 (2007): 513-535. (pdf)
Congestion Allocation Mechanisms for Distributed Networks: An Experimental Study.
Yan Chen, Laura Razzolini and Ted Turocy Economic Theory 33 (2007): 121-143. (pdf: instruction in appendix; payoff tables used in the instruction: ACP, SRL)
When Does Learning in Games Generate Convergence to Nash Equilibria? The Role of Supermodularity in an Experimental Setting. (data deposit at open ICPSR)
Yan Chen and Robert Gazzale. American Economic Review vol. 94, No. 5, December 2004: 1505-1535. (pdf, Supplemental Material: including experiment instruction, DATA)
Dynamic Stability of Nash-Efficient Public Goods Mechanisms: Reconciling Theory with Experiments.
Yan Chen. Experimental Business Research VOL II., Zwick, Rami and Amnon Rapoport (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers: Norwell, MA and Dordrecht, The Netherlands: 2005. (pdf)
An Experimental Study of the Serial and Average Cost Pricing Mechanisms.
Journal of Public Economics. Economics Letters vol. 87, Issues 9-10 (September 2003): 2305-2335. (pdf, data)
Learning Under Limited Information.
Yan Chen and Yuri Khoroshilov. Games and Economic Behavior 44 (July 2003): 1-25. (pdf)
Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms for Pure Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Literature.
Yan Chen. Forthcoming in The Handbook of Experimental Economics Results edited by Charles Plott and Vernon Smith. (Manuscript, Figure)
A Family of Supermodular Mechanisms Implementing Lindahl Allocations for Quasilinear Environments.
Yan Chen. Economic Theory vol. 19, no. 4 (2002): 773-790. (pdf)
Learning and Incentive Compatible Mechanisms for Public Goods Provision: An Experimental Study.
Yan Chen and Fang-Fang Tang. Journal of Political Economy 106 (1998): 633-662. (pdf, data)
The Groves-Ledyard Mechanism: An Experimental Study of Institutional Design.
Yan Chen and Charles R. Plott. Journal of Public Economics 59 (1996): 335-364. (pdf, data)

Positive Political Economy

Electoral Systems, Legislative Process and Income Taxation.
Yan Chen. Journal of Public Economic Theory vol. 2, no. 1 (2000): 71-100. (pdf)
Veto Games: Spatial Committees Under Unanimity Rule.
Yan Chen and Peter C. Ordeshook. Public Choice vol 97, no 4 (December 1998): 617-643. (pdf)
The Optimal Choice of Privatizing State-Owned Enterprises: A Political Economic Model.
Yan Chen. Public Choice vol. 86, no. 3-4 (1996): 223-245. (pdf)
Constitutional Secession Clauses.
Yan Chen and Peter C. Ordeshook. Constitutional Political Economy vol. 5, no. 1 (1994): 45-60. (pdf)

(Everyday) yanchen_at_umich_edu

si-yanchen_at_umich_edu

(I use this email address to invite domain experts to contribute to Wikipedia.)

4348 North Quad

School of Information

University of Michigan

105 South State Street

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285

(734) 764-9488

(734) 764-1555

yanchen_at_umich_edu

Office hours:

Resume fall semester.

Studying at the School of Information

Applying for M.S. in Information

Applying for Ph.D. in Information

Ph.D. students and post-docs:

Ph.D. alumni:

Teaching:

SI 563: Game Theory on open.michigan: The slides have been dScribed by my former student, Mike Harmala.

Acknowledgements:

Our work is made possible through the generosity of the National Science Foundation. However, any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the papers listed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

* This website's template is borrowed from Michael Bernstein.

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