Zelin (James) Li

I am Zelin (James) Li, a Ph.D. candidate in Marketing (Quantitative) at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where I am fortunate to be advised by Duncan Simester.

I investigate how subtle market actions function as strategic signals that reshape both firm strategy and consumer behavior. I ground my research in economic theory while employing field experiments, causal inference, machine learning, and large language models to provide theory- and data-driven behavioral insights that solve key marketing challenges.

I am an AMA Sheth Consortium Fellow (2026) and an ISMS Doctoral Consortium Fellow (2024, 2026). I also received the Credit Suisse Holding Doctoral Fellowship in International Management (2022–2023, 2025–2026). Before MIT, I earned an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University and a B.A. in Statistics and Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.