Jason Zhao
Marketing (Quantitative)
Contact Information
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Education
PhD marketing, Kellogg School of Management, 2025 (Expected)
MS Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, 2021
BA Economics, University of Chicago, 2018
Research Interests
Quantitative Marketing, Industrial Organization, Advertising, Information Economics, Health Economics
Job Market Paper
Product Positioning and Partisanship in the Demand for Local News
Abstract: I study how local newspapers differentiate their news content, and how these editorial choices affect ideological segregation in news consumption. Specifically, I examine how firms position their products when Republicans and Democrats may differ in preferences for both ideologically slanted reporting as well as different topic coverage. To do so, I create a measure of partisan slant that separates politicized rhetoric from different topic selection between Democrats and Republicans. I use this measure to estimate a demand model in which Republican and Democratic consumers have separate, party-specific tastes for partisan slant and topic coverage. I find that consumers in both parties prefer partisan slant that favors their own ideological positions, with Democrats displaying a greater mean preference for like-minded slant. However, while Democrats prefer topic selection that mirrors that of major national papers, Republicans prefer more specialized reporting. I then model how firms choose slant and topic coverage in a simultaneous-move game. I show that because firms may differentiate over not just how but what they report on, policies aimed at limiting political slant in reporting are not sufficient to address polarization in news consumption. Moreover, I find in a counterfactual simulation that government subsidies promoting increased entry in local news may lead to both more extreme slant and increased ideological segregation in consumption.
Working Papers
Limited Consideration and pharmaceutical detailing of atypical antipsychotics (SSRN)
Abstract: Lawmakers often propose banning gifts to physicians in order to counteract harm resulting from persuasive effects, but the welfare effect of such policies is ambiguous if detailing affects behavior through other mechanisms. Rather than solely affecting preferences for drugs, physician gifts may also increase the probability with which a drug is included in a physician’s consideration set. I estimate a structural model of discrete choice under limited consideration in the market for atypical antipsychotics and find a significantly smaller estimate of any utility effect of detailing payments as compared to a naïve model assuming full consideration. Any policy lever aimed toward addressing detailing must weigh distortions from limited consideration against possible persuasive effects of detailing: counterfactual estimates find that while branded drugs are over-prescribed under the status quo, banning gifts leads to under-prescribing of branded drugs, especially long-acting injectable formulations and newer drugs.
Work in Progress
Why Pay Attention to Political Advertising? Information Acquisition, Complementary Consumption and Endogenous Ad Consumption
Abstract: Empirical investigations into advertising mechanisms are made more difficult by the fact that advertising effects can be small and difficult to detect. I instead examine the consumer’s choice to pay attention to advertising in order to shed light on mechanisms underlying advertising effects. Using data on viewer attention to political ads on television, I find evidence for both an informational and a complementary consumption role of advertising. During the primary election season, consumers pay more attention to political ads when they live in states where electoral outcomes are more uncertain, and information is thus more valuable, consistent with an informative effect. However, during the general election, the opposite is true, with attention higher in states where presidential polling strongly favors one candidate over the other. I find further evidence of advertising complementarities during general election season: paying attention to political ads increases consumption of TV news programs in the subsequent 24 hours. However, these effects are stronger in states where electoral outcomes are more certain and information less valuable, suggesting that consumption complementarity is a more likely driver of this effect as compared to consumers being spurred to gather more information.