Misinformation, Persuasion, and News Media on Social Networks ABSTRACT Social media platforms have become a popular source of news and information for a large segment of the society across the political spectrum: Users receive information, share digital contents, or attend to some online publishers for latest news. However, the recent proliferating and fast-spreading misinformation and false news has affected people’s perception about the veracity of online information and in turn their social behavior. In such an environment of real and…

Estimation and Optimization in Online Marketplaces ABSTRACT The emergence of e-commerce business models (such as Airbnb and Amazon) brings opportunities and challenges to their operations. This thesis studies several estimation and optimization problems within the online platform domain, using data-driven approaches in operations management. The thesis consists of three components. Motivated by the unique setting of Airbnb, in the first work, we consider a game-theoretical setup in which each seller on the platform provides a single-unit product and competes with…