Lian Jian is an assistant professor in the School of Communication. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where she studied the economics of information. She has a Master's degree in Science and Technology Policy from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a Master's degree in electrical engineering from Nanyang Technological University, and a Bachelor's degree of engineering in automation from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
Professor Jian's research focuses on the economics of online information systems, using multiple research methods. Examples of her past research include a game-theoretic model of generalized reciprocity in peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, lab experiments on manipulation by bidders in prediction markets, an econometric study of choice of feedback provision strategy by users on eBay, and a data-driven study of why people stop contributing to Wikipedia. Her research has been published by highly respected peer-reviewed journals such as Management Science, the Berkeley Electronic Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, and at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Electronic Commerce and the International Conference on Electronic Commerce. She has co-authored a book chapter on the economics of user-generated content in the Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy. Her current research focuses on collective intelligence, the phenomena of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding, and the business models of news.
https://annenberg.usc.edu/faculty/communication/lian-jian