Jessie Liu

Zhenqi (Jessie) Liu, PhD

Assistant Professor
Academic AreaMarketing
Academic AreaEconomics
Areas of InterestPricing, Information and Media Economics, Digital Marketing

Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. She joined Carey in 2020 after receiving a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her area of expertise lies primarily in information and media economics. Her research studies how information is communicated on digital platforms, and how such communication responds to external pressures such as regulation and public policy. The first stream explores how social media shape what people see and how they interpret it—through algorithmic matching, messaging strategies, and responses to misinformation. The second builds on this by examining how these dynamics shift when platforms face external constraints, such as moderation rules or political events. By studying both the design of communication systems and the downstream effects of policy interventions, her research offers actionable insights for policymakers, platform designers, and marketers.

She received the William Polk Carey Prize in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania's Economics Department. This award was established to recognize the best doctoral dissertation each academic year.
 

Education

  • Ph.D., Economics, University of Pennsylvania
  • BA, Mathematical Economics, Fudan University

Research

Selected Publication

  • “How Allowing a Little Bit of Dissent Helps Control Social Media: Impact of Market Structure on Censorship Compliance,” Journal of the European Economic Association (forthcoming) 
  • "Asymmetric Impact of AI Matching on Influencer Marketing: Implications for Platform Revenue" (with Yi Liu), 2025 Marketing Science 44(1), pp.65-83.      
  • "Less Is More: A Theory of Minimalist Luxury" (with Pinar Yildirim and Z. John Zhang), 2024 Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 33(1), pp.78-110.      
  • "A Theory of Maximalist Luxury" (with Pinar Yildirim and Z. John Zhang), 2022 Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 31(2), pp.284-323.
     

Working Papers

  • “Reactive Marketing: A Bayesian Persuasion Perspective” (with Preyas S. Desai)
  • “How Moderation Shapes Engagement Amid Online Toxicity” (with Ying Bao)
  • "People Are More Likely to Believe and Share Fake News on Smartphones (vs. PCs)" (with Minzhe Xu and Yang Yang)
     

Teaching

Current

  • Customer Analytics

Honors and distinctions

  • SNF Agora Faculty Grant Award, Johns Hopkins University, 2022
  • William Polk Carey Prize for Outstanding Economics Dissertation, 2021
  • AMA Doctoral Consortium Fellow, 2019
  • Mack Institute Research Fellowship, 2019

In the Media

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