Nan Clement
Nan Clement

Welcome to my website! I am a Postdoctral Associate at MIT Sloan.

I finished my Economics PhD under the supervision of Daniel Arce, Catherine Tucker, Anne M. Burton, and Anton Sobolev.

My research focuses on the Digital Economics with an emphasis on Health IT, Cybersecurity, Privacy, Cloud, and Responsible AI.

Prior to graduate school, I was a business data platform test engineer at China Construction Bank Supply Chain Finance Company and an assistant researcher at Investment Research Institute in Beijing. I hold an MS in Accountancy (Data Analytics) from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I am an award-wining teacher with a wide range of teaching interests in Business Analytics, Cloud Platforms, AI, Platform Economics, Microeconomics, Digital Economics, Game Theory, and Health Economics.

A copy of my CV is available HERE. Email me at nanc@mit.edu

Selected Working Papers

Major Revision, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

Abstract:

Hospital data breaches have been shown to disrupt care, incur costs for remediation, and under mine investor confidence. However, less attention has been paid to the causes of these data breaches. This study explores the effects of mergers on hospital data breaches. Drawing upon U.S. hospital merger data over ten years, I empirically show that data breach rates double during merger execution. The results suggest that increases in data breach risk during merger execution are mainly caused by intensified external threats. I present some evidence revealing online visibility and information system integration increase external threats. These findings have managerial implications for predicting and managing the risk of data breaches.

Mergers and Data: Evidence From Healthcare with Catherine Tucker and Amalia Miller

Available upon request

Abstract:

Antitrust concerns often arise when firms that possess stores of customer data combine, because of the data agglomeration potential to increase market power and foreclose competition. However, this depends on the combined firm being able to seamlessly pool the customer data. In practice, merging firms often deploy IT systems that are not compatible with one another, which can raise the costs of data integration. This study empirically examines how compatibility between data systems affects merger outcomes, by comparing outcomes before and after mergers and acquisitions among U.S. hospitals, using data from 2008-2019. We find that only mergers with compatible digital medical record systems achieve cost savings, while incompatible mergers display no significant cost savings. We provide some evidence showing that the cost savings are likely to be from patient-facing cost centers, but no evidence on quality reduction. We also find that health information exchange participation could help incompatible mergers reduce costs, while cloud does not provide similar moderating effects. These findings highlight that the specific technology used to process data itself can be an impediment to realizing benefits from consolidation across firms, and show that mergers involving data can differ substantially in their efficiency, and by implication, competitive effects.

Marketing, AI and Data: Evidence from Medical Devices with Catherine Tucker

Chasing the Winner’s Trail: Radiology Information System Vendor Response to Competitor Installations with Catherine Tucker

Publications

Information Systems Research 36, no. 2 (2025): 916-943.

We create a generalizable dynamic model for shared security on the cloud. Cloud platform competition on security lead to welfare improvement.

Thesis Title: "Essays on Digital Economics"

UT Dallas Best Dissertation Award

Committee:Daniel Arce (Chair), Catherine Tucker, Anne M. Burton, Anton Sobolev

Methodology: Causal Inference, Econometrics, Observational Data, Game Theory

Topics: Health IT, Cybersecurity, Privacy, AI

Working Papers

Abstract:

Hospital data breaches have been shown to disrupt care, incur costs for remediation, and under mine investor confidence. However, less attention has been paid to the causes of these data breaches. This study explores the effects of mergers on hospital data breaches. Drawing upon U.S. hospital merger data over ten years, I empirically show that data breach rates double during merger execution. The results suggest that increases in data breach risk during merger execution are mainly caused by intensified external threats. I present some evidence revealing online visibility and information system integration increase external threats. These findings have managerial implications for predicting and managing the risk of data breaches.

Mergers and Data: Evidence From Healthcare with Catherine Tucker and Amalia Miller

Available upon request

Abstract:

Antitrust concerns often arise when firms that possess stores of customer data combine, because of the data agglomeration potential to increase market power and foreclose competition. However, this depends on the combined firm being able to seamlessly pool the customer data. In practice, merging firms often deploy IT systems that are not compatible with one another, which can raise the costs of data integration. This study empirically examines how compatibility between data systems affects merger outcomes, by comparing outcomes before and after mergers and acquisitions among U.S. hospitals, using data from 2008-2019. We find that only mergers with compatible digital medical record systems achieve cost savings, while incompatible mergers display no significant cost savings. We provide some evidence showing that the cost savings are likely to be from patient-facing cost centers, but no evidence on quality reduction. We also find that health information exchange participation could help incompatible mergers reduce costs, while cloud does not provide similar moderating effects. These findings highlight that the specific technology used to process data itself can be an impediment to realizing benefits from consolidation across firms, and show that mergers involving data can differ substantially in their efficiency, and by implication, competitive effects.

Marketing, AI and Data: Evidence from Medical Devices with Catherine Tucker

Abstract:

It is unclear how privacy policies shape the development of AI technologies. On the one hand, when a state passes a privacy policy, compliance costs and legal risks increase. On the other hand, an established set of privacy regulations may give consumers and firms confidence about how training data sets will be used in the development of AI. We explore these questions empirically in the setting of radiology software, a frontier setting for the use of AI in medicine. In states with stronger privacy protections, companies are less aggressive in marketing AI-powered devices. Using detailing records from the Open Payment project, FDA documents, national demographic data on doctors and clinicians, and the FDA’s list of radiology AI/ML Software as Medical Devices, we explore how current AI and privacy law shape how firms approach marketing payments to physicians. Our analysis reveals that payments from AI medical device manufacturers decrease by 22.6% when the physician’s primary residency state enacts new privacy policies.

Marketing to Individuals within an Organization: Evidence from Physician Ownership Transitions with Yaa Akosa Antwi and Catherine Tucker

Available upon request

Abstract:

Many marketing activities in business-to-business focus on individuals within an organization; however, little is known about how these activities shift as an individual’s organizational role changes. We explore drivers of this using a novel dataset linking physician ownership of ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) to open payment records from 2013 to 2019 to examine how ownership status influences industry marketing behavior to that individual. Using differences-in-differences, we find that ownership status significantly increases the likelihood, frequency, and dollar value of marketing payments to that individual. However, only male physician-owners are more likely to receive these marketing payments. The increase is driven by large pharmaceutical firms, suggesting that resource-rich firms crowd out smaller competitors by dominating physician-owners’ limited time. Larger firms fail to increase attention to new female owners while smaller firms disproportionately reduce female engagement. The largest marketing response is directed to physicians with little prior industry engagement, indicating that firms expand their network of contacts rather than deepening existing relationships. Our findings highlight the strategic importance of a client individual’s role within an organization in determining marketing practices and shed light on the adaptation of business-to-business marketing efforts in response to organizational changes.

Prescription Without Pressure: Voluntary Use, Interstate Spillovers, and Interoperability in PDMP Effectiveness with Xiru Pan, Niam Yaraghi, and Catherine Tucker

Under Review

Abstract:

The U.S. opioid crisis has led states to enact Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), which use information systems to improve prescribing safety and measurement of controlled substance prescriptions. However, their efficacy depends on both uptake rates and availability of appropriate data. This study exploits a natural experiment created by stricter PDMP mandates in California, where data is not shared with Oregon, and Washington, where data is shared with Oregon, to examine physician and patient behavior in Oregon, where PDMP use is discretionary. Using comprehensive physician-level data from the Oregon Health Authority, we show that mandates in neighboring states drive substantial patient inflows into Oregon. In response, Oregon physicians significantly increase voluntary PDMP engagement, especially in regions with access to interoperable, cross-state data. Increased PDMP use is associated with safer prescribing patterns, including reduced opioid prescribing and less doctor shopping. These findings demonstrate that the efficacy of PDMPs, especially when their use is not required, depends on interoperability.

Chasing the Winner’s Trail: Radiology Information System Vendor Response to Competitor Installations with Catherine Tucker

Abstract:

This study examines information system vendors’ competitive reactions when competitors secure new contracts. We do this in the context of radiology information systems (RIS) using a unique dataset on US hospitals from 2017–2024. When vendors observe competitors successfully installing their technology, they could interpret the event in two ways. On the one hand, vendors might see such an adoption as a sign that the client is off the market and move on to redirect their attention to alternative hospitals or untapped markets. On the other hand, a successful installation may be informative about the potential customer’s technological readiness, managerial priorities, and budget availability. We explore these competing effects using a difference-in-difference empirical approach where we compare outcomes for hospitals that recently installed an RIS system relative to those that didn’t. We look particularly at vendor detailing activity (that is paid marketing activities) to potential champions at each hospital. The results indicate a significant increase in outreach following competitor installations. This is important because the fact that competition occurs even after installation helps inform the competitive landscape and the extent of perceived lock-in within healthcare IT.

Publications

Information Systems Research 36, no. 2 (2025): 916-943.
Abstract:

Cloud services exist under a shared security environment with a dynamic nature; users trade fixed costs for variable costs over time and both cloud service providers (CSP) and users contribute to overall security. We investigate the nature of shared security in a dynamic game where users' security contribution takes into account both their users as well as competition with other CSPs. The Markov Perfect Equilibrium reveals the long-term time patterns of security of the cloud. In particular, we identify a novel form of time-path strategic complementary between usage and a CSP's Markov state of security. This implies cloud security is an unusual form of impure public good whereby individual contributions bolstering a CSP's security endow a selective incentive (private benefit) on others, rather than on the contributor alone. Since this increases usage, CSP vulnerability increases over time. At the same time, CSP competition on security may lead to both welfare improvements for users and lock-in.

Selected Works in Progress

Opioid and Information Systems, with Catherine Tucker, Funded by MIT Sloan Health Systems Initiative

Blockchain Virtual World Voting Mechanisms: Are Whale Voters Knights? with Xiang Hui, Luofeng Zhou, and Catherine Tucker, data collection

AI and Operations Management: Evidence from Healthcare, with Atiye Cansu Erol and Catherine Tucker, data cleaning

Computational Measurement of Textual Ambiguity: A Large Language Model Approach to Policy Interpretation Analysis (for Computer Science outlets), with Sally Dong, Emma Cabale, Luke Thorburn, Andrew Konya, Michiel Bakker, experiment ongoing

Fellowships, Grants, Honors, and Awards

CHITA Best Student Paper Award (with Catherine Tucker and Amalia Miller), NBER 2025 Meeting on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities invited attendee, MIT Sloan Health Systems Initiative (HSI) Research Fund (PI: Catherine Tucker), UT Dallas Best Dissertation Award, WEIS’23 Best Paper Award, UC Berkeley SLMath Algorithms, Approximation, and Learning in Market and Mechanism Design invited attendee, Charles C. McKinney Scholarship, DFW Research Data Center Grant ($10,000), NBER 2023 Workshop of Digital Economics invited attendee, NBER 2023 Digital Economics Tutorial invited attendee, Irving J. Hoch Scholarship, Office of Graduate Education Research funding, NSF graduate student travel grant, Alfred P Sloan Foundation student travel grant, Betty Gifford Johnson Travel Award, NBER 2022 Fall Economics of Privacy Tutorial invited attendee

Services

Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Industrial Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Cybersecurity Reviewer, ASHEcon 2024 discussant, WEIS'24 Session Chair, ASHEcon 2023 Newsletter writer

Talk with Nan: If you are a MBA or EMBA student from Sloan, schedule a meeting to talk about your Fall 2024 class. I am very happy to talk about Health IT and Cloud too.

Teaching Award: The University of Texas at Dallas President's Teaching Excellence Award, 2023

Affiliation:INFORMS Early Career Teachers’ Network (ECTN)

Teaching Experiences

Instructor of Record, ECON3310 Intermediate Microeconomic Theory Fall 2022, Spring 2022, and Fall 2021
    Average Evaluation: 4.81/5.0; GPA: 3.30/4.0

Comets to the Core Assessment Reviewer Spring 2023, Spring 2022

Teaching Assistant: 15.732 Executive MBA Marketing Management, ECON4385/ECON5397 Business and Economic Forecasting (R), ECON2302 Principles of Microeconomics, ECON3315 Sports Economics, ECON2301 Principles of Macroeconomics, ECON3312 Money and Banking, ECON2303 Principle of Microeconomics, ECON 6302 Macroeconomic Theory (PhD Core)

Courses Designed

Game Theory with Computer Science Applications, Ph.D. research seminar on Health Digitization, Governance and Auditing Essentials for Cyber Security, Responsible Artificial Intelligence

Teaching Certificates

Graduate Teaching Certificate (GTC) and the Advanced Graduate Teaching Certificate (AGTC) from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at UTD