arXiv AI
Jun 16

LLM-Powered Virtual Population for Demand Simulation and Pricing

arXiv:2606. 16183v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We develop an LLM-powered virtual population model that simulates demand for pricing decisions, in settings where products are described by rich unstructured information, such as text descriptions and images, and where decision makers need not only mean-demand predictions but also uncertainty estimates for counterfactual prices.

By Chengpiao Huang, Kaizheng Wang
arXiv AI
Sep 24

Beyond the Illusion of Power: Calibrating Quasi-Experiments in Observational IS

Information systems researchers increasingly rely on quasi‑experimental methods such as difference‑in‑differences and instrumental variables to infer causal effects from observational panel data. A large Monte Carlo study of 9,837 parameter settings (≈9.8 million simulated datasets) shows that the gap between planned and achieved power is largely driven by serial correlation, panel attrition, staggered adoption bias, and parallel‑trend pre‑testing—factors that no closed‑form power calculator can fully capture. For IV designs, increasing sample size does not improve power or reduce exclusion bias unless instrument strength is enhanced, underscoring that identification hinges on the instrument rather than on larger N.

By Spandan Ghose Chowdhury
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Selection Bias Correction in Retail Intelligence

The paper examines how retail intelligence, which often focuses on high‑velocity products, can suffer from selection bias that skews inflation estimates by overlooking niche items. Using 400 Monte Carlo simulations across four data‑generating scenarios, the authors compare Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) and stratification methods. They find that stratification generally outperforms IPW—achieving sub‑0.04 percentage‑point median error even when population breaks misalign—while IPW only excels under smooth polynomial relationships, highlighting the importance of method choice in long‑tail retail contexts.

By Spandan Ghose Chowdhury