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Biographical
Information
I am an Associate Professor of Management Information
Systems at the College of Business
at University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
where I have been a member of the faculty since 2006. I hold a B.S. in economics and an M.A. and
Ph.D. in information systems from the Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania.
My research examines the strategic and economic impacts of information
technology (IT) with a focus on four themes: IT value, software patent
policy design, IT offshoring, and the social
costs of information privacy.
(1) My work in IT value uses formal economic
models to dispel the notion that IT investments made by profit-maximizing
firms should necessarily increase measures of business value (productivity,
profits, and consumer welfare) or even move them in the same
direction. This work shows that many
of the seemingly contradictory empirical findings in the IT value
literature are actually consistent with economic theory as embodied in
these models. These findings will
help firms to more effectively manage their portfolio of IT investments and
to better align IT investments with strategic and economic goals.
(2) My work in software patent policy design
uses formal economic models to examine the impact of patent policy design
on strategic decisions (e.g., R&D investments, product innovation,
product imitation, patent decisions, product pricing) made by firms in the
software and e-commerce arena. This
work not only models the patent policy design that maximizes social welfare
in a range of business environments but also examines the impact of
alternative policy designs on the distribution of welfare among software
innovators, imitators, and consumers.
Building on existing economic theory, this research develops a new
approach to address the current software patent issues and will help guide
the active debate, in the visible public policy arena, over software
patents in the years ahead.
(3) My work in IT offshoring
uses organizational learning models to examine the potentially adverse
impacts of IT offshoring projects on not only
short- and long-term coordination costs, but also on long-term production
costs due to losses in accumulated production knowledge. This work formally illustrates the
conditions under which IT offshoring may benefit
firms, leading to a set of heuristics for IT managers considering the IT offshoring decision.
(4) My work in the social costs of information
privacy examines menu designs (or policy options) an insurer may offer
to applicants under alternative market conditions to maximize consumer
participation at affordable premiums in the presence of information
asymmetries in the individual health insurance market. Given the dramatic changes in genetic
privacy laws at the state and federal levels over the past decade, this
work has important strategic implications for the health insurance industry
and the ongoing social policy debates.
My research has appeared or
is forthcoming in Information Systems
Research, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information
Systems, Decision Support Systems,
Journal of Information Technology
Theory and Application, and the Journal
of Financial Services Research and has been presented at numerous
conferences, including the Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), the INFORMS Conference on Information
Systems and Technology (CIST), the Americas
Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), and the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE). See my curriculum vita, research
statement, and publications
for further details.
My major teaching assignments have been to teach
senior-level undergraduate courses on Human-Computer
Interaction and Systems Analysis
and Design and graduate courses on the Social and Economic Impacts of IT and Financial Decision-Making for IT Investments. I have received several teaching awards
at the University
of Arizona (where I
was an Assistant Professor of MIS between 1997 and 2006), including the:
·
MIS Professor of the Year Award (2004, 1998)
·
Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Commitment and
Contributions to Students of the Eller College (Spring 2005, Spring 2004,
Spring 2003, Spring 2002, Fall 2001, Spring 2001)
·
Faculty/Teaching Recognition Award (2001, 2000)
·
Excellence in Teaching Award (1999).
See my teaching
statement and teaching
evaluation for further details.
Internally, I have served on College Research Committees, MIS
Undergraduate Committees, MIS
Graduate Committees, MIS
Recruiting Committees, and MIS
Merit Committees. Externally, I
have served on the Program Committee for the 2005 and 2006 INFORMS Conference on Information
Systems and Technology (CIST). I
have served as the Chair of the session on Strategy – Economics of IT in the MIS Fall Conference on Managing IT in Networked Organizations
at the University of Arizona (October 24 – 25, 2003). I have also served as an Associate Editor
for the Business, Markets, and
Economy track in the 23rd
International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Barcelona, Spain (2002). In addition, I am a reviewer for many of
the leading MIS journals and conferences.
Finally, I have indirectly served, through my undergraduate Human-Computer Interaction course,
over 100 organizations by advising student teams who analyze business
problems and design, prototype, and evaluate software solutions to make
business processes better, faster, and cheaper. See my service activities
for further details.
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