Yan Leng

Publications and working papers

Legend: PUB Published Paper, WP Working Paper, M Management Outlet, CS Computer Science Outlet, * Equal contribution

AI Measurement and Human Behavior

  1. PUB CS Wang, Z., Li, M., Liao, R., & Leng, Y. IDEEA: training-free Input-Dependent stEEring via Activation cluster matching
    Accepted, Findings of EMNLP 2026. · Code
  2. PUB M Leng, Y., Sang, Y., & Agarwal, A. Reducing Disparity Between LLMs and Humans: Optimal LLM Sample Calibration
    Accepted, Marketing Science.
  3. PUB M Leng, Y.* & Yuan, Y.* SUVA: A Probabilistic Framework for Auditing LLMs with an Application to Social Preferences
    Information Systems Research, Articles in Advance.
    News coverage: McCombs News, "Audits Help Change a Chatbot's Bad Behavior" (May 21, 2026).
  4. WP CS Leng, Y. A Steerable Internal Direction Links Distinct Mental-Accounting Biases in Large Language Models.
  5. WP CS Leng, Y.* & Nguyen, T.* Latent Neural Coupling of Risk and Time Preferences in LLMs Mirrors Human Biases
    EC '25: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.
  6. WP CS Leng, Y. Can LLMs Mimic Human-Like Mental Accounting and Behavioral Biases?
    EC '24: Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.
  7. WP M Leng, Y. When Prompts Matter: Quantifying Prompt Uncertainty and Improving Empirical Inference with LLM-Based Measurement.
    Major revision, Management Science.
  8. WP M Leng, Y. & Wang, W. Governing Customer-Facing AI: Valuing and Unlearning Data in Fine-Tuned Language Models.
  9. WP M Sang, Y., Leng, Y., & Agarwal, A. User Perception Through LLM: A Theory-driven HyperGraph Framework for Marketing Content Generation.
    INFORMS ISS Cluster Best Paper Award; INFORMS Data Science Workshop Best Student Paper Award (2024).

Networks-Based Machine/Deep Learning

  1. PUB M Leng, Y., Chen, Y., Wu, J., Dong, X., & Shi, G. When Behavioral Data Betray Users: A Diagnostic and Protective Framework Against Social Interaction Leakages
    Information Systems Research, Articles in Advance.
    News coverage: McCombs News, "Online Reviews Risk Cyberattacks" (August 26, 2026) · MSN · Digital Information World · StudyFinds
  2. PUB M Leng, Y., Liu, X., & Ruiz, R. Interpretable Recommendations and Parameter-Grounded Explanations with Multi-Graph Attention
    Accepted, Information Systems Research.
    Funded by the Marketing Science Institute.
  3. PUB M Cao, J.* & Leng, Y.* Adaptive Data Acquisition for Personalized Recommendations with Optimality Guarantees on Short-Form Video Platforms
    Management Science (2025) .
    News coverage: McCombs News, "To Engage Video Viewers, Make More Personal Recommendations" (November 21, 2025).
    Second prize in Data-Driven Research Challenge in INFORMS/Revenue Management & Pricing (2021)
  4. PUB M Leng, Y. & Dimmery, D. (2024). Calibration of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments
    Information Systems Research (2024).
  5. PUB CS Gao, Y., Yan, Q., Leng, Y., & Liao, R. Neural MJD: Neural Non-Stationary Merton Jump Diffusion for Time Series Prediction
    Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) (2025).
  6. PUB CS Yu, X., Li, M., Leng, Y., & Liao, R. Learning Latent Structures in Network Games via Data-Dependent Gated-Prior Graph Variational Autoencoders
    International Conference on Machine Learning [ICML] (2024).
  7. PUB CS Leng, Y., Sowrirajan, T., & Pentland, A. Interpretable Stochastic Block Influence Model: Measuring Social Influence Among Homophilous Communities
    IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (2023) .
  8. PUB CS Rossi, E., Monti, F., Leng, Y., Bronstein, M., and Dong, X. Learning to Infer Structure of Network Games
    International Conference on Machine Learning [ICML] (2022).
  9. PUB CS Leng, Y., Dong, X., Wu, J., & Pentland, A. Learning Quadratic Games on Networks
    International Conference on Machine Learning [ICML] (2020).
  10. WP M Leng, Y., Wang, B., Sang, Y., Yu, D.,Wang, G., Wang, Y. FusionTransNet for Smart Urban Mobility: Spatiotemporal Traffic Forecasting Through Multimodal Network Integration
    Minor revision, Management Science.
  11. WP M Cao, J.* & Leng, Y.* Learning to Optimize Data Quality for Crowdsourcing Labor Markets: A Human-Algorithm-Collaborative Framework
    INFORMS ISS Cluster Best Paper Award, 2021.

Network Spillovers and Dynamics

  1. PUB M Leng, Y., Dong, X., Moro, E., & Pentland, A. Long-Range Social Influence in Phone Communication Networks on Offline Adoption Decisions
    Information Systems Research (2024).
    News coverage: McCombs News, "Phone Lines of Connection" (June 21, 2023).
  2. PUB M Lera, S.* & Leng, Y.* Beyond Pairwise Network Interactions: Implications for Information Centrality
    Information Systems Research (2025) .
  3. WP M Leng, Y.*, Liu, E.*, Ren, Y.*, & Tsyvinski, A.* The Bullwhip: Time-to-Build and Sectoral Fluctuations
    Revise and resubmit, Journal of Political Economy.
  4. WP M Jeong, J., Chan, J., Leng, Y., & Guo, Y. Dynamic Latent-State Centrality for Enterprise Social Media: Predicting Sales Performance from Multiplex Communication
    Conditional acceptance, Information Systems Research.
  5. WP M Leng, Y. & Agarwal, A. Are Spatial Neighbors Complements or Substitutes? Discovering a Visits-based Local Market Structure.