Research
My sundry research interests span behavioral & experimental investigations into decision making and fairness; theoretical analysis of antitrust & competition economics, including the effects of mergers in common-value auction markets; and applications of industrial organization, often to business disciplines such as accounting, operations, and marketing.
Below is a grouping of research by the themes linked above, or you can see my entire list of publications.
Decisions & Choice Overload
Why do individuals often make poor choices when faced with complex decisions involving many options (such as the selection of health care insurance or retirement plan savings options) and what can be done to improve individuals' decision-making performance? In a series of experiments, we identify the decision-making rules that individuals use when selecting among lotteries and how those rules change with the size of the choice set. Further, we examine how demographics (like age) impact choice overload. Several choice architectures to help with information overload are studied.
A related strand of research examines how decisions vary with response modes, or ways of asking individuals to express their preferences. For example, we show that the famous Allais common ratio paradox only manifests in traditional choice environments, and not when subjects evaluate options using subjective happiness or willingness to pay metrics.
Publications & Working Papers
- Age Effects and Heuristics in Decision Making, with Tibor Besedeš, Cary Deck, and Sudipta Sarangi, Review of Economics and Statistics (2012, Vol. 94, No. 2, pp. 580-595)
- Reducing Choice Overload without Reducing Choices, with Tibor Besedeš, Cary Deck, and Sudipta Sarangi, Review of Economics and Statistics (2015, Vol. 97, No. 4, pp. 793-802)
- Decision-Making Strategies and Performance among Seniors, with Tibor Besedeš, Cary Deck, and Sudipta Sarangi, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (2012, Vol. 81, No. 2, pp. 524-533)
- Effort and Performance: What Distinguishes Interacting and Noninteracting Groups from Individuals?, with Tibor Besedeš, Cary Deck, Sarah Marx Quintanar, and Sudipta Sarangi, Southern Economic Journal (2014, Vol. 82, No. 2, pp. 294-322)
- Optimizing Choice Architectures, with Mark Schneider, Cary Deck, Tibor Besedeš, and Sudipta Sarangi, Decision Analysis (2019, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 2-30)
- The Common Ratio Effect in Choice, Pricing, and Happiness Tasks, with Mark Schneider, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (2017, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 976-986)
- An Experiment on Learning with Limited Information: Nonconvergence, Experimentation Cascades, and the Advantage of Being Slow, with Eric Friedman, Scott Shenker, and Barry Sopher, Games and Economic Behavior (2004, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 325-352)
- A Nudge or a Crutch? Temptation, Learning, and Backward Induction in Sequential Decision Tasks, with William Neilson and Michael Price, work in progress
- Learning to Respond: The Use of Heuristics in Dynamic Games, unpublished manuscript (2004)
Grants
- Decision-making with too Many Options, PI: Mikhael Shor (Co-PIs: Tibor Besedes, Cary Deck, Sudipta Sarangi), National Institutes of Health ($363,722, 2008–2011)
Fairness & Procedural Justice
People care about fairness. That extends not only to receiving fair rewards but also to being treated fairly.
My earlier research examined the role of fairness in the context of online coupon codes and cautioned firms not to make the existence of such codes salient to those who do not have discounts. Another experiment shows that subjects value fair procedures and are willing to pay for them.
Publications & Working Papers
- Price Discrimination through Online Couponing: Impact on Purchase Intention and Profitability, with Richard Oliver, Journal of Economic Psychology(2006, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 423-440)
- Induced Over-Benefiting and Under-Benefiting on the Web: Inequity Effects on Feelings and Motivations with Behavioral Implications for Consumption Behavior, with Richard Oliver and Simon Tidd, Motivation and Emotion (2004, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 85-106)
- Digital Redemption of Coupons: Satisfying and Dissatisfying Effects of Promotion Codes, with Richard Oliver, Journal of Product & Brand Management (2003, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 121-134)
- Procedural Justice in Simple Bargaining Games, currently being revised.
Antitrust & Collusion
While collusion in traditional price-setting markets is unambiguosly bad for consumers, holding all else constant, collusion or mergers in common-value auctions provide bidders with more information and therefore encourage higher bids. In this research, we examine when collusion may actually be beneficial for the auctioneer and how collusion can be detected.
Related research examines more general areas of antitrust, including how accounting policies can inadvertently help firms collude and the role of behavioral economics in antitrust enforcement.
Publications & Working Papers
- Industry Concentration in Common Value Auctions: Theory and Evidence, with Vlad Mares, Economic Theory (2008, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 37-56)
- On the Competitive Effects of Bidding Syndicates, with Vlad Mares, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy [Frontiers] (2012, Vol. 12, No. 1)
- Information Concentration in Common Value Environments, with Vlad Mares, Review of Economic Design (2013, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 183-203)
- Auction Models, with Luke Froeb, in John D. Harkrider, ed., Econometrics: Legal, Practical, and Technical Issues (2005, American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law, pp. 225-246)
- Decentralization, Transfer Pricing, and Tacit Collusion, with Hui Chen, Contemporary Accounting Research (2009, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 581-604)
- Behavioral Antitrust and Merger Control, with Gregory Werden and Luke Froeb, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (2011, Vol. 167, No. 1, pp. 126-142)
- Mergers in Auctions with an Incumbent Advantage, with Luke Froeb and Steven Tschantz, Work in progress.
Industrial Organization
Applications of industrial organization and game theory to a number of (often business) disciplines.
Publications & Working Papers
- How Collaborative Forecasting Can Reduce Forecast Accuracy, with Michael Galbreth and Mumin Kurtulus, Operations Research Letters (2015, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 349-353)
- Social Sharing of Information Goods: Implications for Pricing and Profits, with Michael Galbreth and Bikram Ghosh, Marketing Science (2012, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 603-620)
- The Impact of Malicious Agents on the Enterprise Software Industry, with Michael Galbreth, MIS Quarterly (2010, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 595-612)
- The Physician-Patient Relationship: The Impact of Patient-Obtained Medical Information, with Bin Xie and David Dilts, Health Economics (2006, Vol. 15, No. 8, pp. 813-833)
- Innovators, Implementers, and Two-sided Hold-up, with Luke Froeb, Antitrust Source (2015, Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 1-10)
- A Game Theoretic Model of E-Marketplace Participation Growth, with Michael Galbreth, Sal March, and Gary Scudder, Journal of Management Information Systems (2005, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 295-320)
- A Laboratory Test of Auctions with Negative Externalities, with Aniruddha Bagchi, working paper
- Auditor Preference, with Karl Hackenbrack, unpublished manuscript
- An Experiment on Strategic Capacity Reduction, unpublished manuscript