Speaker: Associate Professor Rong Luo (School of Economics, Renmin University of China)
Host: Assistant Professor Cong Xie (China Institute for Economic Research, Liaoning University)
Guest Speaker:Professor Xiangjun Ma (China Institute for Economic Research, Liaoning University)
Time:14:00 – 15:30 (Beijing Time), Thursday, May 28, 2026
Venue:Room 401, Administration Building, Puhe Campus, Liaoning University
Online Access:Tencent Meeting ID: 402-655-512
Language:Chinese/English
Abstract:We analyze the impacts of U.S. sanctions on Huawei smartphones on the Chinese smartphone market. The sanctions changed consumer sentiment toward domestic brands, substitution patterns across brands, and Huawei's production costs. Using quarterly data from 2016 to 2021, we estimate a random-coefficients demand model with a multi-product Bertrand pricing game of manufacturers. Our estimation reveals the following results. (1) The sanctions substantially increased consumer preferences for Huawei and other Chinese brands, shifting demand from foreign brands to Huawei and other Chinese brands. (2) The sanctions imposed a sharp supply shock on Huawei's 5G smartphone production. Counterfactual analysis reveals that, without the sanctions, consumer surplus inclusive of estimated sentiment utility would fall by $5.33 billion per quarter, because removing sanctions eliminates the positive consumer sentiment effect and changes equilibrium pricing by foreign brands.
Speaker Profile：
Rong Luo is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Digital Economy Research Center at the Academy of Advanced Social Sciences (Shenzhen), Renmin University of China. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Pennsylvania State University in 2015. From 2015 to 2020, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, USA. Her research focuses on industrial organization economics, with current topics including network effects in two-sided markets, consumer discrete choice demand models, firm dynamic pricing, vertical contracts between upstream and downstream firms, firm productivity estimation, and the impact of exclusive contracts on second-hand housing prices. Her work has been published in journals such as Management Science, International Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and Journal of Economics & Management Strategy. She serves as the principal investigator for both the Young Scientist Program and the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and is an Associate Editor of China Economic Review.
