Rahul Telang

rtelang.AT.andrew.cmu.edu

Professor of Information Systems and Management
H. John Heinz III College,
Carnegie Mellon University

3040, Hamburg Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Phone: (412) 268-1155
Fax: (412) 268-5337

Rahul Telang is professor of Information systems and Management at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been at the Heinz College since 2002 and predominantly teaches in the School of Information Systems and Management.

Professor Telang’s research interest lies in two major domains. First is on Digital Media Industry with a particular focus on digitization of songs, movies, TV and books is affecting the incentives of content provider, content distributors as well public policy challenges in terms of innovation and copyright. In particular, he has examined the issue proliferation of distribution platforms including online piracy and its impact on traditional music, movies and books industry. Recently, he is investigating the role of social networks on music diffusion, technology adoption, and employee job search. Some of his prior work explored the challenges of interaction of multiple platforms (web portals vs telephony for customer service; SMS and voice for cellular phones). He was the recipient of Sloan Foundation Industry Study fellowship for his work in this domain and co-directs the Digital Media Research thrust at iLAB, an inter-disciplinary research center at the Heinz College. His work is also funded extensively by industry participants including Google, Disney and so on. He is also deputy director of a large and ambitious project called “living analytics” which is a joint endeavor between Singapore Management University and The Heinz College and CMU. He will be directing projects related to digital and social media.

His second area of work is on economics of information security and privacy. His key interest is in understanding the incentives of various parties (users, firms and hackers), what markets fail, and how to create a useful policy framework and how to measure the effectiveness of such policies. He has examined the issue of software vendors’ incentives to improve the quality of their products, and their incentives to release timely patches. In this context his work explores how different policies, competition and security standards shape these incentives. His work explored the controversy surrounding vulnerability disclosure, vulnerability markets and their role in generating optimal outcomes. Recently, he has been examining the role of data breach disclosure laws on identity thefts. He was the recipient of NSF CAREER award for his work on economics of information security. He is also part of Cylab and Institute for Infrastructure Protection (I3P).

Dr. Telang has published extensively in many top journals like Management Science, Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and Journal of Marketing Research. He is on the editorial board of Management Science and ISR. He has organized many conferences and workshops and many of his papers have received top honors at journals and conferences.

Education

PhD (Information Systems), Graduate School of Industrial Administration (Tepper School of Business), Carnegie Mellon University, 2002.
Thesis: Consumer Choice of Internet Search Engines: Empirical and Analytical Framework

M.S. Industrial Administration (Information Systems), GSIA, Carnegie Mellon University, 1999.

MBA, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India, 1997.

B.E. (Electrical and Electronic Engineering), Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India 1994.

Employment

2002-2008 - Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Management, H. J Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University

2004 (November-January) – visiting professor, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

2008-2011 - Associate Professor of Information Systems and Management (without tenure), H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University

2009-2011 - Dean’s Career Development Associate Professor.

2011- Professor of Information Systems and Management, H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University

Prior to joining academia, Dr Telang worked (1994-95) at a large software consultancy firm (TCS – Tata Consultancy Services) in Mumbai, India.

Recent Working Papers

1. B Danaher, M D Smith, R Telang, S Chen, “The Effect of Graduated Response Anti-Piracy Laws on Music Sales: Evidence from an Event Study in France”, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1989240

Digital piracy is a significant problem for the creative industries. Still, while there have been many academic studies showing that piracy hurts sales, there have been far fewer studies analyzing the effectiveness of anti-piracy measures in reversing this effect. This study attempts to address this question by analyzing how the HADOPI “three strikes” law in France affected digital music sales on the iTunes music store.

To do this, we obtained a panel of iTunes sales data from the four major music labels (Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI Music and Sony Music) across a broad set of countries. We then applied a difference-in-difference approach, using sales trends in a control group of European countries to simulate the counterfactual of what music sales in France would have been if HADOPI had not been passed. Our results suggest that increased consumer awareness of HADOPI caused iTunes song and album sales to increase by 22.5% and 25% respectively relative to changes in the control group.

In terms of robustness, we find that these sales changes are similar for each of the four major music labels, suggesting that our results are not peculiar to any particular label. We also find that the observed sales increase is much larger in genres that, prior to HADOPI, experienced high piracy levels (e.g., Rap and Hip Hop) than for less pirated genres (e.g., Christian music, classical, and jazz). This strengthens the causal interpretation of our results since if HADOPI is causing pirates to become legitimate purchases, its effects should be stronger for heavily pirated music than it is for other music genres.

1. Rajiv Garg, Rahul Telang, “Estimating App demand from publicly available data”, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1924044

In this paper, we show how using publicly available data one can estimate the demand for mobile applications. Mobile Apps is a highly dynamic and growing business. However, there is little information on the actual demand for these apps. Most providers like Apple or Android only publish aggregate numbers. However, similar to Amazon, these providers publish the rankings of these apps. Using two such publicly available lists (top 200 grossing and top 200 paid), we show that one can infer the demand for an app for any given rank. A key innovation is that we do not need access to any other data. We validate our estimates with various data sources and show the robustness of our approach.

We believe our results open avenues for many other interesting questions which depend on demand estimates.

2. Rodrigo Belo, Pedro Ferreira, Rahul Telang, “Impact of Broadband in School: Evidence from Portugal”, paper.

In this paper, we show how the use of broadband in classrooms affects student performance. The data is over 2005-2009 from middle schools in Portugal. We show that the more the schools use broadband (in terms of bytes), the worse the students perform in national exams (7-8% decline in grades). We term this as the distraction effect of the Internet. To overcome endogeneity, we use distance of schools from the Central office as an instrument. This is a property of DSL that the schools further from CO are likely to get less throughput. To test the distraction effect in more detail, we collect survey data from schools regarding which applications they allow. Since YouTube is likely to be a source of distraction and bandwidth intensive, we show that the schools which allow YouTube (as opposed to those which block it), are more likely to suffer from Internet use.

Journal Publications

INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY

1. S. Wattal, R. Telang, T. Mukhopadhyay, P. Boatwright (2010), “What’s in a “name”? Impact of Use of Customer Information in Email Advertisement”, Information Systems Research, forthcoming.

2. S. Romanosky, R. Telang, A. Acquisti (2011), “Do Data Breach Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft?”, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), 30 (2), 256-286, paper.

3. A. Arora, C. Forman, A. Nandkumar, R. Telang (2010), “Competition and patching of security vulnerabilities: An empirical analysis”, Information Economics and Policy, (10), 164-177. paper

4. A. Arora, R. Krishnan, R. Telang, Y. Yang (2010) "An Empirical Analysis of Software Vendors’ Patch Release Behavior: Impact of Vulnerability Disclosure", Information Systems Research (ISR), 21(1), 115-132, paper, data

5. Ashish Arora, Rahul Telang, Hao Xu (2008), “Optimal Policy for Software Vulnerability Disclosure”, Management Science, 54(4), 642-656 paper

6. Rahul Telang, Sunil Wattal (2007), “An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Software Vulnerability Announcements on Firm Stock Price”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering paper, 33 (8), 544-557.

7. Ashish Arora, Anand Nandkumar, Rahul Telang (2006), “Does Information Security attack frequency increase with Vulnerability disclosure? - An Empirical Analysis”, Information Systems Frontier, 8(5), 350-362.paper

8. Ashish Arora, Jonathan Caulkins, Rahul Telang (2006), "Sell First, Fix Later: Impact of Patching on Software Quality", Management Science (Research Note), 52(3), 465-471 paper

9. Karthik Kannan, Rahul Telang (2005), "Market For Software vulnerabilities? Think Again", Management Science, 51(5), 726-740. paper

10. Ashish Arora, Rahul Telang (2005), "Economics of Software Vulnerability Disclosure", IEEE Security and Privacy, 3 (1), 20-25.

11. Ashish Arora, D Hall, C. A. Pinto, D Ramsey, R Telang (2004), "Measuring the Risk Based Value of IT Security Solutions", IEEE IT Professional, 6(6), 35-42.

DIGITAL MEDIA, PIRACY AND USED GOODS

1. B Danaher, S Dhanasobhon, M Smith, R. Telang (2010), “Converting Pirates without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy”, Marketing Science, 29(6), 1138:1151. Paper.

2. M. D. Smith, R. Telang “Piracy or Promotion? The Impact of Broadband Internet Penetration on DVD Sales”, Information Economics and Policy, 22(4), 289-298.

3. Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2010), “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasting on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy”, MIS Quarterly, 33(2), 321-338. paper

4. S Bhattacharjee, R Gopal, K Lertwachara, J Marsden, R Telang (2006), “The Effect of Digital Sharing Technologies on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts”, Management Science, 53(10), 1359-1374. [lead Article] paper

5. R Krishnan, M D. Smith, Z. Tang, R. Telang (2007) “Digital Business Models for Peer-to-Peer Networks: Analysis and Economic Issues”, Review of Network Economics, 6(2), 194-213. paper

6. Anindya Ghose, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2006), "Internet Exchanges for Used Books: An Empirical Analysis of Product Cannibalization and Welfare Impact", Information Systems Research (ISR), 17(1), 3-19, [Lead Article] paper

· An article about this paper appeared in The New York Times article.

· Won the runner-up best published paper award in ISR.

7. Anindya Ghose, Rahul Telang, Ramayya Krishnan (2005), "Impact of Electronic Secondary Markets on Information Goods Supply Chain, Journal of MIS (JMIS), 22(2), 91-120. paper

8. Rahul Telang, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2005), "Drivers of Web Portal Use", Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. 4(1): 46-62. paper

9. Rahul Telang, Peter Boatwright, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2004), "A Mixture Model for Internet Search Engine Visits", Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 41(2), 206-214. paper

10. Rahul Telang, Uday Rajan, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2004), "The Market Structure for Internet Search Engines", Journal of MIS (JMIS), 21(2), 137-160. paper

11. Ramayya Krishnan, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2004), "The Economics of Peer to Peer Networks", Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), 5(3), 31-44. paper

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICT), AND THEIR IMPACT

1. Y. S. Kim, R. Telang, B. Vogt, R. Krishnan (2010), “Empirical Analysis of Mobile Voice and SMS Service: A Structural Model”, 56(2). 234-252, Management Science. paper.

2. Robert E. Kraut, Shyam Sunder, Rahul Telang, James Morris (2005), "Pricing to Solve the Problem of Spam", Human-Computer Interaction, 20, 195-223 paper.

3. Anuj Kumar, Rahul Telang. “Impact of Customer Web Portals on Call Center”, Information Systems Research (forthcoming), paper.

OTHER PAPERS

1. Anuj Kumar, Rahul Telang, “Product Customization and Customer Service Costs: An Empirical Analysis”, forthcoming, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), paper.

2. Sunil Wattal, Rahul Telang, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2009), "Information Personalization in a Two-Dimensional Product Differentiation Model”, Journal of MIS, 26(2), 69-95. paper

AWARDS

1. William Larimer Mellon Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University, 1997.

2. Nominated for ICIS 2000 Doctoral Consortium to be held in Brisbane, Australia.

3. Winner of the 2002 William W Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award.

4. National Science Foundation NSF CAREER AWARD for the proposal "Securing Cyberspace: Role of Markets and Policy"

5. Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Fellowship.