Study shows that on-demand ride sharing mitigates traffic congestion

It raises average vehicle occupancy, decreases the number of cars on the road and reduces car ownership, writes Yili Hon

Product Uncertainty in Online Marketplaces in China: An Econometric Model

Most studies on online marketplaces focus on seller uncertainty and rely on data from online marketplaces in the U.S. This paper extends this literature by focusing on product uncertainty and defining its two dimensions - description uncertainty (identifying the product‘s characteristics) and fit uncertainty (matching product characteristics with the buyer’s needs). It also examines the distinction, relationship, and relative effects of the two dimensions of product uncertainty on actual product returns, and how online marketplaces can use IT-enabled mechanisms to mitigate product uncertainty. The proposed hypotheses are tested with data from 144 buyers in Taobao’s online marketplace in China using an econometric model. The results stress the role of product presentations in reducing description uncertainty and of online communication, both between the buyer and the seller and also among buyers, in reducing fit uncertainty. The paper draws implications for reducing product uncertainty in online marketplaces with the aid of IT

Prediction of remaining life of power transformers based on left truncated and right censored lifetime data

Prediction of the remaining life of high-voltage power transformers is an important issue for energy companies because of the need for planning maintenance and capital expenditures. Lifetime data for such transformers are complicated because transformer lifetimes can extend over many decades and transformer designs and manufacturing practices have evolved. We were asked to develop statistically-based predictions for the lifetimes of an energy company's fleet of high-voltage transmission and distribution transformers. The company's data records begin in 1980, providing information on installation and failure dates of transformers. Although the dataset contains many units that were installed before 1980, there is no information about units that were installed and failed before 1980. Thus, the data are left truncated and right censored. We use a parametric lifetime model to describe the lifetime distribution of individual transformers. We develop a statistical procedure, based on age-adjusted life distributions, for computing a prediction interval for remaining life for individual transformers now in service. We then extend these ideas to provide predictions and prediction intervals for the cumulative number of failures, over a range of time, for the overall fleet of transformers.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/00-AOAS231 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Modeling Twitter Engagement in Real-World Events

Twitter offers tremendous opportunities for people to engage with real-world events (e.g., political election) through information sharing and communicating about these events. However, little is understood about the factors that affect people’s Twitter engagement (e.g., posting) in such real-world events. This paper examines multiple predictive factors associated with four different perspectives of users’ Twitter engagement, and quantify their potential influence on predicting the (i) presence; and (ii) degree of the user’s engagement with real-world events. We find that the measures of people’s prior Twitter activities, topical interests, geolocation, and social network structures are all variously correlated to their engagement with real-world events.

Online job auctions are more successful when bids are open for all to see

Open-bid auctions are more likely to result in a contract, write Yili Hong and Paul A. Pavlou

Anonymity and Language Usage: A Natural Experiment of Social Network Integration

The Internet creates an anonymous and non-authoritarian environment where people do not have social inhibitions and can express opinions freely. However, such disinhibition at times leads to abusive use of language and uncivil behavior in the online environment. This paper leverages data from a natural experiment on an online review platform that integrated social network platform personalization features, which exposes users in an anonymous environment to a social environment. Interestingly, our preliminary findings show that after the social network platform integration, users express more emotions (specifically, they become more positive but less negative), are less likely to use inappropriate language that include sexually explicit words or words that shows rage. Further, users are less egocentric and more social in their language use. We discuss the implication of this study for creating a civil online environment