UCLA Department of Economics
(301) 518-0968 sikwok@ucla.edu
https://sites.google.com/site/siweikwok/
Placement Director:
Placement Director:
Placement Coordinator:
William Zame
John Asker
(310) 206-9463
(310) 825-1011
Christina Romero (310) 206-1413
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Home Address: 1536 S. Saltair Ave Apt 204
Phone Number:
E-mail:
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(301) 518-0968 sikwok@ucla.edu
Department Address Department of Economics
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/siweikwok/
Nationality: U.S.
University of California, Los Angeles
8283 Bunche Hall zame@econ.ucla.edu
johnasker@econ.ucla.edu
cromero@econ.ucla.edu
EDUCATION
University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D. Candidate, Economics
M.A., Economics
University of Maryland at College Park
Honors and Gemstone Program
Economics Honors Program
B.S., Mathematics & B.A., Economics
REFERENCES
Connan Snider (Chair)
Department of Economics, UCLA
(310) 794-7104 snider@econ.ucla.edu
Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn
Department of Economics, UCLA
(310) 825-1011 mtv@econ.ucla.edu
Simon Board
September 2009 – June 2016
(expected)
December 2010
May 2009
Department of Economics, UCLA
(310) 825-5304 sboard@econ.ucla.edu
Edward McDevitt
Department of Economics, UCLA
(310) 825-3772 mcdevitt@econ.ucla.edu
RESEARCH
Fields of Interest
Industrial Organization, Applied Econometrics, Applied Microeconomics

Job Market Paper
Advertising and “Hype” in the U.S. Movie Industry
This paper investigates the notion of “hype” in the U.S. motion picture industry, which occurs whenever an upcoming film is heavily advertised irrespective of its underlying quality. Using a combined data set of weekly advertising expenditures, revenues, and movie characteristics of wide release films from 2003 to 2012, I study how underlying quality and incomplete information impact the advertising decisions of film studios. I exploit weekly variation in the data by using regression analysis and a matching difference-in-difference estimator to determine the causal effect of release and high critical reviews on advertising behavior. I find that advertising prior to a film's release is not statistically related to underlying film quality, but studios with movies revealed to be high quality spend 62% more on advertising after release than other films. I build a theoretical model of advertising with incomplete information that supports this result.
The numerical solution to the model shows that the advertising strategies of high and low quality films move in opposite directions as consumers become better informed of quality.
Working Papers
Quality Disclosure and Competition: Evidence from the Los Angeles Restaurant Market
(with Marcus Studart)
We study the interaction of information and competition in incentivizing firms to produce high quality. We estimate a discrete quality choice game, using restaurant hygiene inspection data in Los Angeles County, from 1995 through 1998. Our results show that information is sufficient for competition to have an effect on quality provision.
We also find that after the mandatory disclosure of information to consumers, a restaurant’s equilibrium quality increases in the number of competitors up to a certain threshold. Beyond this threshold, an additional firm has a negative effect on quality choice. This result may indicate that too much competition reduces the returns of quality provision, which we interpret as a result of firms having more difficulties to retain customers.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
UCLA , Department of Economics; Teaching Assistant
• Principles of Microeconomics for Anne Bresnock Fall 2010, Winter 2012 and Michael Sproul
• Microeconomic Theory for William Zame, Connan Snider, Winter 2011, Spring 2011, and Edward Kung
• The Economics of E-commerce and Technology for
Winter 2012
Fall 2011, Fall 2012
•
Simon Board
Introduction to Game Theory for Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn Spring 2012, 2013, 2014
• Industrial Organization: Theory and Tactics for Connan Snider Winter 2014
UCLA , Department of Economics; Instructor
• Microeconomic Theory
• Microeconomic Theory
• Principles of Macroeconomics
Summer 2012
Summer 2013
Fall 2013

OTHER WORK EXPERIENCE
Federal Trade Commission , Bureau of Economics; Summer Intern
• Built Microsoft Access forms and collected data for study on
Virtual Worlds. Coded data analysis programs for study on wind turbines and energy production in Stata
National Institutes of Health , NCBI/NLM; Volunteer Researcher
• Coded numerical programs for biostatistics research project
June 2009 - August 2009
June 2008 - August 2008 involving hypothesis testing in the fitting of random distributions in C++
National Institutes of Health , NCBI/NLM; Student Researcher
• Coded data manipulation programs for a peptide database search research project in Java and C++.
June 2007 - August 2007
National Institute of Standards and Technology ; Volunteer Researcher June 2004 - August 2004
• Created a computer simulation in FORTRAN 90 to calculate first-order diffraction effects in a system with lenses and apertures
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Alves G, Ogurtsov AY, Kwok S, Wu WW, Wang G, Shen RF, Yu YK (2008) Detection of co-eluted peptides using database search methods. Biol. Direct, 3:27
AWARDS
U.S. Fellowship (UCLA)
UMCP Dean’s List (Semester Academic Honors)
National Merit Scholarship Finalist
President’s Scholarship (UMCP)
2009
2006, 2007, & 2008
2005
2005-2009
SKILLS
Computing: Stata, MATLAB, Python, Java, C/C++, Visual Basic, FORTRAN 90, Linux
Languages: English (native), Chinese (basic)