信息管理与商业智能系讲座（7月3日）

题目：Algorithmic Collusion or Competition: The Role of Platforms’ Recommender Systems

讲座嘉宾：华盛顿大学 讲席教授  Yong Tan

主持人：信息管理与商业智能系 刘子博

时间：2026年7月3日（周五）10:00 am - 11:30 am

地点：线下 李达三楼105室 ；

线上：腾讯会议587743847/密码722722

摘要：Recent research and regulatory efforts have increasingly examined AI-driven algorithmic collusion in pricing. However, on online platforms where pricing algorithms are widely used, recommender systems simultaneously influence consumer choices. To study the interaction between these two AI systems, we develop a repeated-game framework that combines consumer search, recommendation, and pricing algorithms. We first estimate a structural search model to capture consumer responses to different recommendation sets, then design personalized recommendation algorithms that maximize platform revenue and/or consumer utility. Integrating these with sellers’ pricing algorithms, we conduct numerical experiments. Results show that revenue-oriented recommender systems strengthen algorithmic collusion, while utility-oriented systems encourage competition. Balanced recommendation objectives generate two fairness concepts based on price and utility equivalence relative to a no-recommendation benchmark. We also uncover a “more is less” effect: larger recommendation sets can reduce platform performance by weakening the recommender system’s influence on pricing algorithms. Product differentiation further shapes the likelihood and intensity of collusion.

简介：Yong Tan is the Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Information Systems and Chair of Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, the Chang Jiang Scholar Visiting Chair Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, a Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS Information Systems Society, and a member of Washington State Academy of Sciences. His research interests include electronic, mobile and social commerce, big data, AI, economics of information systems, social and economic networks, sharing economy, fintech, and health IT. He has published close to 120 papers in top tier journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, Operations Research, and Management Information Systems Quarterly, and has been consistently ranked the top researcher by the Association for Information Systems. He served as a senior editor and an associate editor of Information Systems Research and an associate editor of Management Science, and is a senior editor of Production and Operations Management and on the board of editors of Journal of Management Information Systems. He has advised more than 30 doctoral students and placed them in top information systems programs.