Boyoon Chang

Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Oregon, interested in empirical IO and competition in digital markets.

Summary


  • A Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Oregon, entering the job market for the 2023-2024 cycle
  • Interested in empirical industrial organization, platform competition, and dynamic optimization problems
  • A skilled communicator with teaching experience as the sole instructor of three undergraduate courses, and the discussion leader of more than five undergraduate courses in economics
  • A interdisciplinary collaborator with experience working in various sectors, including consulting, legal, and an intergovernmental organization
  • A web development hobbyist


Job Market Paper


Why Firms Buy: Dynamic Games of Acquisition Among Tech Giants  

Tech markets often feature high market concentration and frequent acquisitions. Understanding the motives underlying these acquisition strategies is therefore a first-order question for regulators and practitioners. I formulate a dynamic discrete choice model involving multiple agents to analyze acquisition records of the "big five" -- Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple. I characterize the firms' acquisition decisions observed in the data as a Markov perfect equilibrium that are driven by their internal motives and defensive motives. I find that the defensive motives can explain a major share of their acquisition behaviors, sometimes overshadowing their internal motives of economies of scale. I show that a company might opt to acquire not necessarily because it enhances its core strengths, but to defend against its significant rivals (other members constituting 'tech giants') from obtaining targets that put itself at a competitive disadvantage.

Colored in red are the top 20 sectors that have been popular among the tech giants for acquisitions from 1987 to 2021. To enlage the image, click here


Skills


Programming skills: R, Julia, Stata, PostgreSQL, SQL, Javascript, CSS, HTML, Python, Latex
Web applications developed
Technical and learning notes on few topics related to and including:


Teaching Experience


Insructor on Record:


Teaching Assistant / Grading Assistant:


Professional Experience


Research Associate, Capital Economic Consulting Group, Lee & Ko Law Firm
Intern, UNESCO
Intern, Arthur D. Little
Intern, Institutional Shareholder Service


Education


Ph.D. in Economics, University of Oregon
M.S. in Economics, University of Oregon
M.S. in Economics, Korea University
B.A. in Business Administration, Korea University