SICS - Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy
Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Sponsored by
Institute for Business Innovation (IBI), University of California Berkeley
The NET Institute
www.NETinst.org
Program
Monday, July 6, 2026
6:30 - 8:30pm
Reception, Faculty Club
Tuesday, July 7
9:00 - 10:20am
"Consumer Inattention and Quantity Surcharging"
Giovanni Compiani (University of Chicago), Jean-Pierre Dubé (University of Chicago), and Joonhwi Joo (University of Texas, Dallas)
Discussant: Matthew Osborne (University of Toronto)
10:40 - 12:00pm
"When Learning Increases Uncertainty: A Model of Multidimensional Consumer Evaluation"
W. Jason Choi (University of Maryland), and Jiwoong Shin (Yale University)
Discussant: Yunfei (Jesse) Yao (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
1:30 - 2:50pm
"Refinancing Advertising, Inequality, and the Last Mile of Monetary Policy"
Zhenling Jiang (University of Pennsylvania), Donggwan Kim (Boston College), Yesim Orhun (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Olivia Natan (University of California, Berkeley)
3:10 - 4:30pm
"Referral Program Design: Thresholds and Cold Starts"
Harry Zihao Zhou (University College, London)
Discussant: Yi Zhu (University of Minnesota)
Wednesday, July 8
9:00 - 10:20am
"Opaque Auctions: Value of Information and Transparency in Ad Auctions"
Stylianos Despotakis (City University of Hong Kong), and Jungju Yu (Seoul National University)
Discussant: Bobby Zhou (University of Maryland)
10:40 - 12:00pm
"Algorithms, Biases, and Belief Polarization"
Varad Deolankar (National University of Singapore), Jessica Fong (University of Michigan), and S. Sriram (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Yewon Kim (Stanford University)
1:30 - 2:50pm
"Competition and Privacy"
Yifei Wang (University of Pittsburgh)
Discussant: Tong Guo (Duke University)
3:10 - 4:30pm
"When Artificial Differentiation Met Artificial Intelligence"
Preyas S. Desai (Duke University), and Jessie Liu (Johns Hopkins University)
Discussant: Eddie Ning (University of British Columbia)
Thursday, July 9
9:00 - 10:20am
"Why it Works: Can LLM Hypotheses Improve AI Generated Marketing Content?"
Tong Wang (Yale University), K. Sudhir (Yale University), and Hengguang Zhou (Yale University)
Discussant: Yufeng Huang (University of Rochester)
10:40 - 12:00pm
"Artificial Intelligence in Team Dynamics: Who gets replaced and why?"
Xienan Cheng (Peking University), Mustafa Dogan (University of East Anglia), and Pinar Yildirim (University of Pennsylvania)
Discussant: Upender Subramanian (University of Texas, Dallas)
1:30 - 2:50pm
"Distributional Effects of Exclusive Dealing in Retail Real Estate"
Camilla Schneier (University of Chicago)
Discussant: Kristina Brecko (University of Rochester)
3:10 - 4:30pm
"Designing Detection Algorithms for AI-Generated Content: Consumer Inference, Creator Incentives, and Platform Strategy"
Jieteng Chen (Chinese University of Hong Kong), T. Tony Ke (Chinese University of Hong Kong), and Jiwoong Shin (Yale University)
Discussant: Mohammad Zia (Chapman University)
7:00pm
Conference Dinner
Friday, July 10
The NET Institute day
9:00 - 10:20am
"Will it Click? Advertising Strategy with Generative AI"
Itay P. Fainmesser (Johns Hopkins University), Dominique Lauga (University of Cambridge), Elie Ofek (Harvard University)
Discussant: Fei Long (University of North Carolina)
10:40 - 12:00pm
"Targeting Information in Ad Auction Mechanisms"
Srinivas Tunuguntla (Duke University), Carl Mela (Duke University), Jason Pratt (Koddi)
Discussant: Dinara Akchurina (University of Toronto)
1:30 - 2:50pm
"Social media advertising loads as prices"
George Beknazar-Yuzbashev (University of Chicago), Rafael Jiménez-Durén (Bocconi University), Andrey Simonov (Columbia University), and Mateusz Stalinski (University of Warwick)
Discussant: Soheil Ghili (Yale University)
3:10 - 4:30pm
"Digital Ecosystems and Data Regulation"
Andrew Rhodes (Toulouse School of Economics), Jidong Zhou (Yale University), and Junjie Zhou (Tsinghua University)
Discussant: Yuxin Chen (New York University Shanghai)
5:00pm
Drinks at the Faculty Club