Lorin Hitt

Lorin is currently the Zhang Jindong Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.

His central research area is on the relationship between information technology and productivity and the factors that affect the value of IT investments. Most of his recent work has been the study of complementary factors, such as organizational design and human capital, on the value of IT. Most of this work is directed at firms in all industries, although he have become increasingly interested in IT deployment in healthcare. In recent years, we have been more extensively working on the role of the IT workforce and issues that affect the demand and wages of IT workers (such as offshoring and the H1-B visa program). Lorin has also been extensively involved in electronic business research investigating the nature of competition in electronic markets (such as on-line travel agents), the value proposition for alternative delivery systems (such as online retail banking), the role of switching costs in determining pricing and product strategy (as in online discount brokerage), and the effect of recommender systems on consumer behavior.

Lorin teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in information systems management and economics and data analysis. He also consults and conducts research into the design of IT outsourcing agreements, methods for evaluating IT investments, and other questions at the intersection of information systems, economics and econometrics.