Research

Gal's research studies the effects of visible social networks on electronic markets and the economics of digital rights management. Her prior research has won the ACM SIGMIS Best Dissertation Award (ICIS 2008), the CIST Best Paper Award (2008) and the ICIS Best Paper award (2004)

The Visible Hand of Networks in Electronic Commerce

I am interested in studying how the increased visibility of networks in online markets influences electronic economic outcomes. In particular, my work seeks to understand how network structure influence demand and demand patterns and whether the structure of the network can be used to improve demand predictions. In trying to answer those questions, my work integrates economic theory as well as methods that originate in social network theory and computer science, into econometric models.

Papers

Oestreicher-Singer, G. and Sundararajan, A., 2008. "The Visible Hand of Social Networks in Electronic Markets". (An early version of this paper won the award for best overall paper at CIST 2008)

Oestreicher-Singer, G. and Sundararajan, A., 2008. "Recommendation Networks and the Long Tail of Electronic Commerce". (The first version of this paper was invited for presentation at the plenary session of the Second Annual Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research Symposium)

* Also see conference presentations and invited presentations on this topic

Piracy, Pricing and Digital Rights Management

Papers

Oestreicher-Singer, G. and Sundararajan, A., 2006. "Are Digital Rights Valuable? Theory and Evidence from eBook Pricing". (An early version of this paper won the award for best overall paper at the 2004 ICIS)

Oestreicher-Singer, G. and Sundararajan, A., 2005. "Digital Rights and Wrongs". SternBusiness Fall/Winter 2005, 28-31.

* Also see conference presentations and invited presentations on this topic