About

I am an economist specializing in international trade, industrial organization, and innovation, looking for new opportunities to use simulations and statistics to provide insights for decision-makers at the intersection of business decisions, government interventions, and emerging technologies.

My research explores characteristics of high-tech industries that reward scale and experience, allowing a few firms to dominate cutting-edge markets, with implications for consumer welfare, firm strategy, industrial policy, and national security.

Job Market Paper

Boosting the Competition: Reliability, Learning, Trade Barriers, and the Market for Space Launch Services

I examine how a US export restriction from 1999-2013 may have helped safe, capable, and profitable space launch services develop in China, India, and Japan. Using a census of nine thousand space launches since 1957, I show that US regulations shifted demand towards inexperienced entrants, while trial-and-error helped entrants retain their gains after 2013. My model combines reliability growth analysis from engineering with dynamic competition to create a new model of "learning by doing" in reliability which highlights the role of "debugging" new products in high-tech markets.

Conference Presentations

Leveraging a Circular Economy for Space Sustainability: Government Roles and Economic Impacts

with Nate Dailey, Kevin Toner, Rozlyn Engel, Zhanna Malekos-Smith, and Lee Steinke

With the rising quantity of satellites and debris in Earth's orbit, it becomes crucial to understand how different emerging technologies, new business models, and suggested regulations could affect the long-term profitability of satellite services. I created a simulation of the space economy with dynamic firm entry and simulated orbital debris propagation to estimate effects of different policies and technologies on the orbital environment, working closely with space technology and law experts to craft different scenarios for space stewardship. I presented this work at the International Astronautical Congress in 2024 and the Fall 2024 Space Pillars meeting.

Behavioral Economics in Space: Steering the Future of Space Governance for Security and Sustainability

with Nate Dailey, Karen Lee, Eric Sundby, Zhanna Malekos-Smith, and Ruth Stillwell

Earth's orbit is an environment confronted with increasing crowding, massive externalities for bad behavior, and limited mechanisms to enforce best practices like timely end-of-life operations. Behavioral economics can help us anticipate, counteract, and even leverage decisionmaker psychology to solve these global issues. Working with experts on space law and policy, I developed a primer to behavioral economics which presents rational and behavioral models of human decision-making in head-to-head comparisons and explains how each well-documented behavioral effect translates into recommended practical methods for promulgating sustainable space norms.

This work was presented at International Astronautical Congress Milan 2024 and the Fall 2024 Space Pillars meeting.

Australia’s Space Epoch: Leveraging Geolocational and Technological Advantages to Forge a Commercial Space Frontier

with Nate Dailey and Zhanna Malekos-Smith

What makes a country a good candidate for developing new space industries? We lay out qualitative and quantitative arguments for Australia’s potential comparative advantage in space launch, space tourism, and extraterrestrial mining, and explain why the government has a crucial role in supporting investment in Australia’s space sector.

Presented at UT Austin 10th Space Traffic Management conference

Credit: University of Queensland

Works in Progress

Nonparametric Heterogeneity in Social Influence

When positive network effects are important to the value of a product, consumers may delay adoption until others have adopted. Understanding the size of the "early adopter" and "bandwagon" demographics is critical to optimizing a firm's pricing, advertising, and promotions. I invert the social influence / social threshold model from Young (2009) to transform a noisy diffusion curve into a nonparametric estimate of the distribution of consumers by adoption threshold, which can be used to inform marketing for future comparable titles. As an example, the results for the fourth game in the "Counterstrike" series are shown, exhibiting a point mass of early adopters and a second peak of bandwagon adopters peaking at 116k users, consistent with a highly-anticipated sequel that nevertheless relies on multiplayer and community features.

Testing for Fun and Profit: Dynamics of Early Access Software

Combining my previous work on reliability growth analysis and social diffusion, I explore a new startup model in the video game industry where consumers buy "early access" to unfinished games: consumers provide revenue, report bugs, signal interest to the developer and share word-of-mouth before the game's formal release. I measure changes in customer experience over time using forum posts and product reviews, I use developer patch notes as a proxy for continued developer investments in improving product quality, and I use sales estimates to gauge the impact on firm profits. My goal is to model how some early access titles enter into a "virtuous cycle" where early sales lead to increased patching, a better product, better word-of-mouth, and even more sales, while others enter a "vicious cycle" of declining sales, persistent bugs, and negative word-of-mouth. The ultimate goal will be to help marketplaces like Xbox Live, PSN, and Steam improve policies to encourage innovative independent projects while protecting consumers from "abandonware."

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