Short Bios:
BENJAMIN CHIAO is a PhD candidate in the School of Information, University of Michigan. Starting Fall 2008, he will join the Peking University Guanghua School of Management as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Economics (full-time appointment) and the Department of Management Science and Information Systems (courtesy appointment). His general interests are the law and economics of information systems and policies, and experimental method; his specialties are open-content economics, and economic solutions to spam. He has worked on open-content production (non-price coordination experiments, its comparison with communism, and optimal liability rules in licensing), standard-setting organizations, and using uncensored communication channels to reduce spam. His research has appeared in, for example, RAND Journal of Economics. He is currently an active member in the Incentive-Centered Design and the Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions groups at the University of Michigan. Previously, he was Visiting Scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Research Scientist/Director of Operations at NYU, both in the new labs he helped establish. He obtained his BBA and MSc from HKUST and graduated from La Salle College. He co-founded the Ann Arbor Chinese Intellectuals group, which regularly hosts activities such as academic salons. He also initiated the Sichuan Teachers Limited (sichuanteachers.org) for teaching kids affected by the Sichuan Earthquake. His recent invited talks include those in: Academia Sinica, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia U., National Taiwan U., Peking U., Shanghai Jiaotong U., Singapore Management U., Tsinghua U., UC Irvine, U. of Michigan, U. of Toulouse, and U. of Washington.
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Research News:
Upcoming:
(Starting Fall 2008) To join the Peking University Guanghua School of Management as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Economics (full-time appointment) and the Department of Management Science and Information Systems (courtesy appointment).
(Forthcoming) Dissertation Title: “Essays in Information Economics.” Dissertation committee members: Jeffrey MacKie-Mason (chair), Yan Chen, Michael Cohen, and Jessica Litman. It includes three papers: 1.Benjamin Chiao (2007), “Torts in Open Contents.” 2. Benjamin Chiao (2007), “Experiments in Open Contents.” 3. Benjamin Chiao and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason (2007). “Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic”. Details here.
Past:
(May 25, 2008) This joint paper is now published in the RAND Journal of Economics, Winter 2007: Benjamin Chiao, Josh
Lerner, and Jean Tirole, "The Rules of Standard Setting Organizations:
An Empirical Study".
(Apr 21-25, 2008) Attended lectures by Steven N.S. Cheung at Xi'an Jiaotong U.
(Apr 7-18, 2008) Academia Sinica [Institute of Economics], Peking U. [Business School Department of Management Science and Information System, and Department of Applied Economics], Peking U., Shenzhen [Business School Department of Economics], Tsinghua U. [Business School Department of Economics], National Taiwan U. [Department of Economics], Shanghai Jiaotong U. [School of Economics], Singapore Management U. [School of Information Systems].
(Feb 1, 2008) Invited to give a job talk in the information school at the University of Washington.
(Jan 24, 2008) Invited to give a job talk in the business school at the University of California, Irvine.
(Jan 22, 2008) Invited to give a job talk in the business school at Carnegie Mellon University.
(Jan 18, 2008) Invited to give a talk in the information school (FIRST seminar series) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
(Jan 15, 2008) To give a talk at the Incentive-Centered Design Lab at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
(Jan 9-12) To participate in faculty job interviews at the ALISE conference in Philadelphia.
(Dec 8-13, 2007) Participated in faculty job interviews at the International Conference on Information Systems in Montreal, Canada.
(Dec 8-9, 2007) Attended the Workshop on Information Systems Economics in Montreal, Canada.
(Dec 8, 2007) Attended the Workshop on Information Security and Privacy in Montreal, Canada.
(Nov 17, 07) Presented an overview on the law and economics of intellectual property and led the discussion in "A Salon on Intellectual Property", organized by the Ann Arbor Chinese Intellectuals I co-founded.
(Jun 22, 07) Invited to present "The Standardization of Internet Protocols and its Implications" at the Ultrabroadband Networks and the Personal Media Cloud conference organized by Eli Noam, Elias Aravantinos, Raul Katz, and John Heywood to be held at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University. This is a general talk with themes from my previous papers on standards and patents. Also served as a panelist on "Enablers and obstacles of the Ultrabroadband deployment".
(May 16 -19, 07) Presented "Torts in Open Innovation: Liability Indemnification through Patent Pools" at the European Academy of Management -- Open Innovation Track held in Paris.
(May 9, 07) Presented "Some Law and Economics of Google Book Search" at the STIET workshop at the U. of Michigan.
(May 5, 07) Presented "Some Law and Economics of Google Book Search" at the 6th Michigan China Forum.
(Apr 20, 07) Invited by Nicholas Economides to serve as a discussant at the NET Institute Conference at New York University.
(Feb 9, 07) Presented a poster of my research portfolio (with a preliminary dissertation focus on open contents, and spam) at the Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies at the U. of Michigan. Look at the abstracts of all participants here.
(Jan 19-20, 07) Presented "Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic" in the Fourth bi-annual Conference on the Economics of the Software and Internet Industries at IDEI in Toulouse, France. Joint work with Jeffrey MacKie-Mason. Proceedings of the 34th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy. Awarded the NET Institute grant. NET Institute Working Paper No. 06-20. Download:  . Here is a hypothetical uncensored channel screenshot:
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(Oct 15-17, 06) Attended the Information School Conference ("i-conference") in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(Sep 30, 06) Presented "Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic" at the Telecommunication Policy Reearch Conference held in Virginia. Joint work with Jeffrey MacKie-Mason.
(Aug 12-13, 06) Presented "Torts in Open Innovation: Liability Indemnification through Patent Pools" at the Academy of Management Open Source Software Research Development Workshop held at Atlanta.
(Jul 23-25, 06) Invited to "The Innovation Policy and the Economy" session of the National Bureau of Economics Research, held at Cambridge, MA.
(Jun 18-21, 06) Presented a poster of my research works at the Workshop on the Economics of IT at NYU Business School.
(Jun 11-15, 06) Attended the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, which was hosted by U. of Michigan this year! My advisor Jeffrey MacKie-Mason was one of the conference chairs. He chaired the precursor conference. Together with Michael Wellman, they were instrumental in starting this conference.
(May 9, 06) Invited by Beth Noveck to participate in the Community Patent (or Peer to Patent) Workshop at the Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School.
(May 2, 06) Presented "Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic" at the STIET workshop at U. of Michigan. Joint work with my advisor Jeffrey MacKie-Mason.
(May 2, 06) Invited by Sirkka Jarveenpa to participate in “The Future of Open Source Peer Production Models: Business and Legal Frontiers” workshop, organized by the McCombs School of Business and the law school at the U of Texas (Austin).
(Apr 23-26, 06) Invited by Internet2 to participate in its members' meeting in Arlington, near Washington DC.
(Apr 6, 06) Presented "Torts in Open Innovation: Liability Indemnification through Patent Pools" at the Incentive-Centered Design Lab.
(Mar 24, 06) Presented some preliminary ideas on "Parallel Music Progression" at the PhD Informal Seminar at Michigan.
(Mar 20, 06) Started to serve as a referee for the journal Electronic Commerce Research.
(Jan 25, 06) Presented "An Experimental Study of Open Innovation Using MASTERMIND" at the Economic Science Association's meeting in Hong Kong. The hosting site (cEBR) is a lab I helped establish a few years ago. I am grateful for the financial support from the Rackham Discretionary Fund at the U of Michigan, and the Center for Experimental Social Science at NYU. Please download the presentation slides here.
(Jul 18, 05) Invited to "The Innovation Policy and the Economy" session of the National Bureau of Economics Research, held at Cambridge, MA. This is for my joint paper: Benjamin Chiao, Josh
Lerner, and Jean Tirole, "The Rules of Standard Setting Organizations:
An Empirical Study". |
