Thomas Jungbauer

Biography

Thomas Jungbauer is an assistant professor of strategy and business economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. He applies economic theory to study welfare implications of allocation mechanisms like auctions or platforms in two-sided economies with prices. In addition, he is interested in the strategic effects of lying and misrepresentation in these markets. While his research primarily focuses on high-skill labor markets, his analyses extend to questions of industrial organization and entrepreneurship.

In his work, Jungbauer shows that wage competition in high-skill labor markets may result in an inefficient allocation of workers if firms hiring quotas are sufficiently different. He also establishes that firms may opt to delegate their bidding for different vacant positions to agents within or outside the firm as they navigate the optimal trade-off between commitment and market power. Currently, he analyzes how strategic misrepresentation such as resume padding or odometer fraud affects market outcomes.

In another line of research, he analyzes the optimal branding strategy of firms that sell vertically differentiated product lines. Jungbauer shows that consumers' brand sensitivity affects the optimal firm policy in a non-monotonic way. Moreover, his work offers an explanation why we see firms implement different branding approaches successfully in one and the same market. His previous work in economic theory critically reviews the literature of games under fundamental uncertainty and suggests an alternative benchmark approach mirroring the concept of rationalizable strategies under risk.

Jungbauer teaches the Business Strategy core module at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University in the two-year MBA program as well as the MBA/FMBA Cornell-Tsinghua dual-degree program. He has also taught in the Cornell Tech MBA. During his graduate studies at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University he taught sessions for various classes in economics, statistics, and strategy at the undergraduate, graduate, MBA, and executive level.

He received his PhD in managerial economics and strategy from the Kellogg School in 2016. He also holds master's degrees in managerial economics from Northwestern University and in economics from the Vienna Institute of Advanced Studies.

Selected Publications

• Jungbauer, Thomas; Ritzberger, Klaus. "Strategic Games Beyond Expected Utility"Economic Theory. 48.2 (2011): 377–398
• Jungbauer, Thomas. "Strategic Wage Posting with Fixed Quotas" (in preparation).
• Jungbauer, Thomas; Nasser, Sherif; Schmid, Christian. "Branding Vertically Differentiated Product Lines: Branded House vs. House of Brands" (in preparation).
• Jungbauer, Thomas; Waldman, Michael. "Self-Reported Signaling"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. 15.3 (2023): 78-117
• Jungbauer, Thomas; Schmid, Christian. "Branding vertical product line extensions"Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. (forthcoming).
• Chen, Yi; Jungbauer, Thomas; Wang, Zhe. "The strategic decentralization of recruiting"Journal of Economic Theory. 209 (2023): 105639
• Jungbauer, Thomas; Satterthwaite, Mark. "Referral Behavior when Matching is Important" (in preparation).

Awards and Honors

• Best 40 under 40 Professors (2018) Poets & Quants
• Teaching Honor Roll (2017) Johnson School of Management, Cornell University
• Teaching Appreciation Award (2016) Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
• Executive Teaching Appreciation Medal (2015) Executive Manager's Program 99, Northwestern University
• Award for Extraordinary Academic Achievements (2009) Republic of Austria

Recent Courses

• NCCT 5090 - Strategy
• NCC 5090/LAW 5091 - Strategy

Academic Degrees

• PhD Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 2016
• MS Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 2013
• MS Vienna Institute of Advanced Studies (IHS) & Vienna University of Technology (TU), 2011
• BS Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration (WU), 2009

In the News

• November 13, 2018 Amazon's New Headquarters Is Coming to Northern Virginia. Here's How Local Colleges Helped Make That Happen.
• August 16, 2018 Google's censored search engine could actually help Chinese citizens
• July 18, 2018 EU fines Google a record $5 billion over mobile practices