Welcome! This is Cheng Lu.
I’m a Ph.D. student in Marketing Science at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). I’m advised by Prof. Dennis Zhang. My research interests lie in User-Generated Content (UGC) Platforms, Social Networks, Causal Inference, and Machine Learning.
Education
- Ph.D. Student in Marketing Science, Washington University in St. Louis, 2023 - 2029 (Expected)
- M.A. in Management, London Business School, 2022 - 2023
- B.S. in Economics, Tsinghua University, 2018 - 2022
Research
- Working Papers
- Guangying Chen, Cheng Lu, Tat Y. Chan, Zhengling Qi, Dennis J. Zhang, and Industry Collaborators. “A New Estimator for Encouragement Design in Randomized Controlled Trials When the Exclusion Restriction Is Violated.”
Runner-up for the 2024 INFORMS Information Systems Cluster Best Paper Award (Top 5%) - Meng Liu, Cheng Lu, Xiang Hui, and Dennis J. Zhang. “Referrers vs. Referees: How Do Reactivation Referral Programs Work on Social Media?.”
- Guangying Chen, Cheng Lu, Tat Y. Chan, Zhengling Qi, Dennis J. Zhang, and Industry Collaborators. “A New Estimator for Encouragement Design in Randomized Controlled Trials When the Exclusion Restriction Is Violated.”
- Work in Progress
- Meng Liu, Cheng Lu, Shilei Luo, Xiang Hui, and Dennis J. Zhang. “Unexpected Consequences in Recommender-Based Content Moderation”
Conference Presentations
A New Estimator for Encouragement Design in Randomized Controlled Trials When the Exclusion Restriction Is Violated
- INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, 2024
- Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics, New Haven, CT, 2024
Teaching
Teaching Assistant - Washington University in St. Louis
- Applied Marketing Research (Undergraduate), FL 2024
- Marketing Research (Master), FL 2024
- Understanding & Conducting Business Experiments (Undergraduate), SP 2025
- A/B Testing in Business and Social Science (Master), SP 2025