My research falls under the following categories
(To see a chronological listing of my publications, please see my CV)

Online Communities and Peer-to-Peer Networks

I am fascinated by the dynamics of online communities, especially when participation is anonymous and voluntary and there is little verbal communication, such as music sharing networks. I am interested in factors that determine and change users' roles in these communities.

Papers:

• Mu Xia, ChengXiang Zhai, Bin Tan, Yue Lu, Qiaozhu Mei. "'You Are What You Write'--Understanding User Online Behavior through Text Mining," Social Mediating Technologies Workshop, CHI 2009, Boston, MA, USA, April 4, 2009. (PDF)

• Mu Xia, Yun Huang, Wenjing Duan and Andrew B. Whinston. "To Share or Not To Share? – An Empirical Analysis on User Decisions in Online Sharing Communities," available at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1028165.

• Mu Xia, Yun Huang, Wenjing Duan, Andrew B. Whinston. "Voice of the Crowd: Ballot Box Communication in Online Communities," Forthcoming in Communications of the ACM. (PDF) (This paper is featured in a UIUC news release.)

• Mu Xia, Yun Huang, Wenjing Duan, Andrew B. Whinston. "Implicit Many-to-One Communication in Online Communities," in Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Communities and Technologies, C. Steinfield, B.T. Pentland, M. Ackerman, and N. Contractor (Eds.), 265-274, Springer-Verlag, London, UK. (Conference held on June 28-30, 2007 at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.)

• Mu Xia, Wenjing Duan, Yun Huang and Andrew B. Whinston. "Unravel the Drivers of Online Sharing Communities: An Empirical Investigation," Working paper. Under review. (UIUC College of Business Working paper 06-0109) (This paper is the lead story in the College of Business August '06 eNewsletter, as well as featured in a UIUC news release.)

• Mu Xia, Wenjing Duan, Yun Huang and Andrew B. Whinston. "Do Free-riders Matter? An Empirical Analysis of Online Sharing Communities, " Working paper. Presented at INFORMS CIST 2006, Nov. 4-5, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

e-Business Standards Development and Adoption

I am interested in how competing firms in the marketplace are voluntarily collaborating in industry-focused (or vertical) standard consortia and how these standards are being adopted.

In one of the current projects, we look at factors that motivate or hinder firms' participation in a vertical standard consortium (VSC). In the first phase of this project, we surveyed a number of VSCs and their member firms. For more information about this project, please see the project web page.

Papers:

• Mu Xia, Kexin Zhao and Joseph Mahoney. "Enhancing Value via Cooperation: Firms’ Process Benefits From Participation in a Consortium." (UIUC College of Business Working Paper 08-0109)

• Kexin Zhao, Mu Xia, Michael Shaw. "What Drives Industry-Wide Collaboration in Standards Consortia: An Empirical Investigation of Consortium-Based E-business Standardization," working paper.

• Kexin Zhao, Mu Xia, Michael Shaw. "An Empirical Investigation of E-business Standardization Initiatives," Presented at Workshop for e-Business (WeB) 2006, December 9, Milwaukee, WI, USA.

• Kexin Zhao, Mu Xia, Michael Shaw. "An Integrated Model of Consortia-Based E-business Standardization: Collaborative Development and Adoption with Network Externalities," Journal of Management Information Systems, Spring 2007, Vol. 23, No. 4, 247-271. (An earlier version is titled "Open e-Business Standard Development and Adoption: An Integrated Perspective," and was presented at the Workshop for MIS Quarterly Special Issue on Standard Making, Seattle, Washington, December 13—14, 2003. and WISE 2003.) (PDF)

• Kexin Zhao, Mu Xia, Michael Shaw. "Vertical E-Business Standards and Standards Developing Organizations: a Conceptual Framework," Special Issue on Vertical Standards, Electronic Markets, 15(4), 289—300, Fall 2005. (PDF)

E-Markets and Combinatorial Auctions

This area of research is built on and extends my dissertation topic. I am interested in the economics of electronic markets and combinatorial auctions.

Papers:

• Mu Xia, Nan Xia. "The Complementary Impacts of e-Markets on Existing Supplier-Buyer Relationships in a Supply Chain," Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 25, No. 3, 9-64, Winter 2008-9. (PDF)

• Nan Xia, Mu Xia. "Alternating-offers Bargaining Model with Non-fixed Sum and Outside Options," Working paper. (Previous title: "Subgame perfect equilibrium of the general Rubinstein model with non-fixed sum and outside options"). (PDF)

• Kexin Zhao, Mu Xia, Michael Shaw and Chandra Subramaniam. "The Sustainability of B2B E-Marketplaces: Ownership, Market Competition, and Prior Buyer-Seller Connections," Decision Support Systems, 47, 105-114, May 2009. (PDF)

• Xiubin Wang, Mu Xia. "The Combinatorial Bid generation Problem for Transportation Service Provision," Transportation Research Record, 1923, 189—198, 2005. (PDF)

• Mu Xia, Jan Stallaert, Andrew B. Whinston. "Solving the Combinatorial Double Auction Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 164, No. 1, 239—251, July 2005. (PDF)

• Mu Xia, Gary Koehler, Andrew B. Whinston. "Pricing Combinatorial Auctions," European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 154, No. 1, 251—270, April 2004. (PDF)

• Ruth King, Ravi Sen, Mu Xia. "The Impact of Web-based e-Commerce on Channel Strategy in Retailing," International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Vol. 8, No. 3, 103-130, Spring 2004. (PDF)

• Kerem Tomak, Mu Xia. "A Strategic Analysis of Exchange Based B2B Networks," in e-Business Management: Integration of Web Technologies with Business Models, Michael Shaw (ed), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Chapter 16, 355-371, 2003.

• Kerem Tomak, Mu Xia. "Evolution of the B2B Marketplaces," Electronic Markets, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1-8, 2002. (PDF)

Other

• Ramanath Subramanyam, Mu Xia. "Free/Libre Open Source Software Development in Developing and Developed Countries: A Conceptual Framework with an Exploratory Study," Decision Support Systems, 46, 173-186, Dec 2008. (PDF)

• Mingzhi Li, Zhangxi Lin, Mu Xia. "Leveraging the Open Source Software Movement for Development of China’s Software Industry," Information Technologies and International Development, MIT Press, Vol. 2, No. 2, 45-63, Dec 2004. (PDF)

• Wooje Cho, Mu Xia. "Software Vendors’ Investment in Unobservable Attributes of Product Quality: An Economic Approach for Enterprise System Products," Presented at INFORMS CIST 2006, Nov. 4-5, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.