Xiao Lei · 雷骁

Assistant Professor

HKU Business School

Biography

Welcome to my site! I am an Assistant Professor at HKU Business School. I earned my Ph.D. in Operations Research from Columbia University under the guidance of Prof. Adam Elmachtoub. My research is centered on designing enjoyable and sustainable user experiences. Much of my recent work focuses on two major themes:

Optimizing repeated and sequential user experiences in emerging digital platforms, particularly in the gaming industry, and utilizing gaming elements to improve user experiences in education.
Advocating for socially responsible practices in revenue management and pricing, including fairness, anti-collusion, anti-addiction, and more.

My research has been acknowledged with several prestigious awards, including the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, INFORMS Service Science Best Student Paper Award, INFORMS RMP Jeff McGill Best Paper Award, and CSAMSE Best Paper Award. Additionally, my work has been featured on the INFORMS podcast Resoundingly Human and Management Science Review. I also have more than 50,000 followers on Zhihu, a Chinese knowledge sharing platform.

I will reimburse myself for intercontinental seminar flights. Feel free to reach out :)

Interests

Digital Economy
People-centric Operations
Socially Responsible Operations
Revenue Management and Pricing

Education

PhD in Operations Research, 2022

Columbia University
MSc in Operations Research, 2018

Columbia University
BSc in Financial Engineering, 2016

University of International Business and Economics

Research

Working Papers:

Pricing and Addiction Control for Digital Services.

with Jiacheng Chang and Feng Tian.

Experimental Design in Live-Interaction Platforms.

with Chenran Weng and Nian Si.

Taste of Free Lunch: The Impact of Free Product Disclosure on Review Dynamics.

with Yimin Yin and Yipu Deng.

Regulating Discriminatory Pricing in the Presence of Tacit Collusion.

with Zongsen Yang and Pin Gao.

• Conference Version: WINE 2024
• Finalist for Zongsen Yang, INFORMS Service Science IBM Best Student Paper Award, 2024.
• Media Converage: [Financial Times中文网 (Mandarin)]

Content Rotation in the Presence of Satiation Effects.

with Beichen Wan and Shixin Wang.

Matchmaking Strategies for Maximizing Player Engagement in Video Games.

with Mingliu Chen and Adam Elmachtoub.

• Conference Version: EC 2022
• Third Prize, INFORMS Service Science IBM Best Student Paper Award, 2022.

Herding, Learning and Incentives for Online Reviews.

with Rajeev Kohli, Yimin Yin and Yeqing Zhou.

Publications:

Price Discrimination with Fairness Constraints , Management Science (2022).

with Maxime Cohen and Adam Elmachtoub.

• Conference Version: FAccT 2021
• Finalist, INFORMS RMP Jeff McGill Student Paper Award, 2022.
• Featured article on Management Science, December 2022 (Blog in Management Science Review).
• Oral presentation at The 4th Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG), 2020.

Loot Box Pricing and Design , Management Science (2021).

with Ningyuan Chen, Adam Elmachtoub and Michael Hamilton.

• Conference Version: EC 2020 [Video]
• Third Prize, 2021 CSAMSE Best Paper Award.
• Winner, INFORMS Service Science IBM Best Student Paper Award, 2019.
• Invited to present at Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop.
• Media Converage: [PC Gamer] [Tech Xplore] [游民星空 (Mandarin)]

Pricing of Reusable Resources under Ambiguous Distributions of Demand and Service Time with Emerging Applications , European Journal of Operational Research (2020).

with Vinh Xuan Doan and Siqian Shen.

Dynamic Pricing and Learning with Competition: Insights from the Dynamic Pricing Challenge at the 2017 INFORMS RM & Pricing Conference , Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management (2019).

with Ruben van de Geer, Arnoud V. den Boer,Christopher Bayliss, Christine S. M. Currie, Andria Ellina, Malte Esders, Alwin Haensel, Kyle D. S. Maclean, Antonio Martinez-Sykora, Asbjørn Nilsen Riseth, Fredrik Ødegaard and Simos Zachariades.

Stochastic Maximum Flow Interdiction Problems under Heterogeneous Risk Preferences , Computers & Operations Research (2018).

with Siqian Shen and Yongjia Song.

PhD Dissertation:

Revenue Management in Video Games and with Fairness.

• Honorable Mention, the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, 2023.

Honors & Awards

Finalist for Zongsen Yang, INFORMS Service Science IBM Best Student Paper Award, 2024

Honorable Mention, INFORMS George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, 2023

Finalist, INFORMS RMP Jeff Mcgill Student Paper Award, 2022

Third Place, INFORMS Service Science IBM Best Student Paper Award, 2022

Finalist, CSAMSE Best Paper Award (Chinese Scholars Association for Management Science and Engineering), 2021

First Place, INFORMS Service Science IBM Best Student Paper Award, 2019

Winner, Dynamic Pricing Challenge at INFORMS RM&P Conference, 2017

Miscellaneous

Travel:

I travel a lot, for conferences and for vacation. I enjoy and marvel at the fantastic cultures and fabulous sceneries around the world. Below is a footprint of myself.

Photography:

I’m constantly studying and improving my photography skills. Below is a sample of my work from my instagram. They are from Banff in Canada, Dream Lake in USA, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and Quarry Bay in Hong Kong.

R:

I’m an intensive R user. As you may have noticed, the footprint is made by R. (Want to make it for yourself? Try this code.) Also, this site is made in RStudio, with the Academic Theme by Hugo.