Ginger Jin

About

Ginger Zhe Jin is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research primarily focuses on information asymmetry among economic agents and how to provide information to overcome this problem. Her work has explored various applications including retail food safety, health insurance, prescription drugs, e-commerce, regulatory inspection, scientific innovation, air quality, blood donation, vaccination, intrafamilial interaction, data regulation, and consumer protection. Jin's research has been published in leading economics, management, and marketing journals, supported by organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Net Institute, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She has also been recognized in major media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, and the Los Angeles Times. Jin has served as the Director of the FTC Bureau of Economics, Amazon Scholar, and Senior Principal Economist at Amazon.com. She is currently a managing editor of the International Journal of Industrial Organization, an advisory council member of the Journal of Industrial Economics, and a board member of the Industrial Organization Society. She has been a Research Associate of the NBER since 2012 and co-founded Hazel Analytics, an analytics company promoting open government data. Jin earned her PhD in Economics from UCLA in 2000.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Microeconomics
• Economics
• Business
• Internet privacy
• Psychology
• Finance
• Commerce
• Industrial organization

Selected publications

• The Short-Run Effects of the General Data Protection Regulation on Technology Venture Investment

  Marketing Science · 2021 · 126 citations

  Jia et al. study the effects of the General Data Protection Regulation on technology venture investment in the European Union.

  DOI

• Is No News (Perceived As) Bad News? An Experimental Investigation of Information Disclosure

  American Economic Journal Microeconomics · 2021 · 111 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This paper uses laboratory experiments to directly test a central prediction of disclosure theory: that strategic forces can lead those who possess private information to voluntarily provide it. In a simple sender-receiver game, we find that senders disclose favorable information, but withhold unfavorable information. The degree to which senders withhold information is strongly related to their stated beliefs about receiver actions, and their stated beliefs are accurate on average. Receiver acti…

  PublisherDOI

• Complex Disclosure

  Management Science · 2021 · 56 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  We present evidence that unnecessarily complex disclosure can result from strategic incentives to shroud information. In our laboratory experiment, senders are required to report their private information truthfully but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure more than half the time. This obfuscation is profitable because receivers make systematic mistakes in assessing complex reports. Regression and structural analysis suggest that these mistake…

  PublisherDOI

• Algorithmic pricing: Implications for marketing strategy and regulation

  International Journal of Research in Marketing · 2025-05-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  Over the past decade, a growing number of firms have delegated pricing decisions to algorithms in consumer and business markets such as travel, entertainment, and retail, as well as in platform markets such as ride-sharing. We define algorithmic pricing as “the use of programs to automate the setting of prices.” Firms adopt algorithmic pricing to optimize their prices in response to changing market conditions and to leverage the efficiency gains from automation. Advances in information technolog…

  PublisherDOI

• Designing Quality Certificates: Insights from eBay

  Journal of Marketing Research · 2024-07-31 · 10 citations

  article

  Quality certification is a common tool to enhance trust in marketplaces. Should the certification be based on consumer reports, such as ratings, or administrative data on seller behavior, such as the number of seller-initiated cancellations? In theory, incorporating consumer reports makes the quality certificate more relevant for consumer experience but may discourage seller effort, because consumer reports can be driven by factors not entirely within sellers’ control. Alternatively, using admin…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Zhentong Lu

  Bank of Canada

  66 shared

• Xiaolu Zhou

  58 shared

• Lu Fang

  53 shared

• Li‐An Zhou

  Peking University

  41 shared

• Guangyu Cao

  41 shared

• Michael Luca

  William Carey University

  40 shared

• Renna Jiang

  University of Chicago

  40 shared

• Liad Wagman

  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  40 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Maryland, College Park

Awards & honors

• Research Associate of NBER (2012)

Similar researchers at University of Maryland, College Park

• John C. Haltiwangerh-99
• Maureen Cropperh-61
• Sebastian Galianih-54