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- October 2024
- Article
Canary Categories
By: Eric Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli and Duncan Simester
Past customer spending in a category is generally a positive signal of future customer spending. We show that there exist “canary categories” for which the reverse is true. Purchases in these categories are a signal that customers are less likely to return to that... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
'De Gustibus' and Disputes about Reference Dependence
By: Thomas Graeber, Pol Campos-Mercade, Lorenz Goette, Alexandre Kellogg and Charles Sprenger
Existing tests of reference-dependent preferences assume universal loss aversion. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes for such tests. In experiments on labor supply and exchange behavior we measure gain-loss attitudes and then... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Money, Time, and Grant Design
By: Kyle Myers and Wei Yang Tham
The design of research grants has been hypothesized to be a useful tool for
influencing researchers and their science. We test this by conducting two thought
experiments in a nationally representative survey of academic researchers. First,
we offer participants a... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
Social preferences facilitate the internalization of health externalities, for example by reducing mobility during a pandemic. We test this hypothesis using mobility data from 258 cities worldwide alongside experimentally validated measures of social preferences.... View Details
- March 2022
- Article
Learning to Rank an Assortment of Products
By: Kris Ferreira, Sunanda Parthasarathy and Shreyas Sekar
We consider the product ranking challenge that online retailers face when their customers typically behave as “window shoppers”: they form an impression of the assortment after browsing products ranked in the initial positions and then decide whether to continue... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Drives Variation in Investor Portfolios? Estimating the Roles of Beliefs and Risk Preferences
By: Mark Egan, Alexander MacKay and Hanbin Yang
We present an empirical model of portfolio choice that allows for the nonparametric estimation of investors' (subjective) expectations and risk preferences. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset of 401(k) plans from 2009 through 2019, we explore heterogeneity in asset... View Details
- October 2021
- Article
Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach
By: Nicolas Padilla and Eva Ascarza
The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details
- November 2020
- Article
Taxation in Matching Markets
By: Arnaud Dupuy, Alfred Galichon, Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers
We analyze the effects of taxation in two-sided matching markets, i.e., markets in which all agents have heterogeneous preferences over potential partners. In matching markets, taxes can generate inefficiency on the allocative margin by changing who is matched to whom,... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Heterogeneity of Gain-Loss Attitudes and Expectations-Based Reference Points
By: Pol Campos-Mercade, Lorenz Goette, Thomas Graeber, Alex Kellogg and Charles Sprenger
Existing tests of reference-dependent preferences assume universal loss aversion. This paper examines heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes, and explores its implications for identifying models of the reference point. In two experimental settings we measure gain-loss... View Details
- May 2020
- Article
Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences
By: Anke Becker, Benjamin Enke and Armin Falk
This paper shows that contemporary population-level heterogeneity in risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust partly traces back to the structure of the migration patterns of our very early ancestors. To document... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
Costly Concessions: An Empirical Framework for Matching with Imperfectly Transferable Utility
By: Alfred Galichon, Scott Duke Kominers and Simon Weber
We introduce an empirical framework for models of matching with imperfectly transferable utility and unobserved heterogeneity in tastes. Our framework allows us to characterize matching equilibrium in a flexible way that includes as special cases the classic fully- and... View Details
- 2019
- Article
Ridesharing with Driver Location Preferences
By: Duncan Rheingans-Yoo, Scott Duke Kominers, Hongyao Ma and David C. Parkes
We study revenue-optimal pricing and driver compensation in ridesharing platforms when drivers have heterogeneous preferences over locations. If a platform ignores drivers' location preferences, it may make inefficient trip dispatches; moreover, drivers may strategize... View Details
- March 2019
- Article
A Structural Analysis of the Role of Superstars in Crowdsourcing Contests
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Param Singh and Anindya Ghose
We investigate the long-term impact of competing against superstars in crowdsourcing contests. Using a unique 50-month longitudinal panel data set on 1677 software design crowdsourcing contests, we illustrate a learning effect where participants are able to improve... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Labor Market Shocks and the Demand for Trade Protection: Evidence from Online Surveys
By: Rafael Di Tella and Dani Rodrik
We study preferences for government action in response to layoffs resulting from different types of labor-market shocks. We consider the following shocks: technological change, a demand shift, bad management, and three kinds of international outsourcing. Respondents... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach
By: Eva Ascarza
The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details
- January 2019
- Article
Making Moves Matter: Experimental Evidence on Incentivizing Bureaucrats Through Performance-Based Postings
By: Adnan Q. Khan, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Benjamin A. Olken
Bureaucracies often post staff to better or worse locations, ostensibly to provide incentives. Yet we know little about whether this works, with heterogeneity in preferences over postings impacting effectiveness. We propose a performance-ranked serial dictatorship... View Details
- November 2018
- Article
Global Evidence on Economic Preferences
By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde
This article studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
- Technical Note
Making Markets
Explains how to identify and capitalize on marketplace design opportunities. Defines markets and marketplaces and describes the basic functions of each. Discusses attributes (e.g., heterogeneity of participants' preferences and asymmetry in available information) that... View Details
- November–December 2017
- Article
Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy
By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek
Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for retailers. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a “self-matching policy,” which allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and store prices to... View Details
- January 2017
- Article
Contract Design and Stability in Many-to-Many Matching
By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
We develop a model of many-to-many matching with contracts that subsumes as special cases many-to-many matching markets and buyer/seller markets with heterogeneous and indivisible goods. In our setting, substitutable preferences are sufficient to guarantee the... View Details