I am a Research Scientist in the Economics Group at Yahoo! Research. I came to Yahoo! after completing my Ph.D. in economics at UC San Diego under the capable guidance of Jim Andreoni. At Yahoo! I have done pure research in behavioral economics and industrial organization (see published and working papers below) as well as applied research in dynamic and variable pricing, quantifying user experience and personnel incentives (some of this research may be published at a later date).
Disclaimer The views expressed herein represent my own and not those of Yahoo! Inc., however, Preston McAfee has committed to agree with at least 64%.
Contact Information and References
Justin M. Rao My Research Interests Behavioral Economics, Business Economics, Belief Formation and Decision Making, Communication,
Information and Inference, Incentives and Personnel Economics Published Papers The Good News-Bad News
Effect: Asymmetric Processing of Objective Information about Yourself (local copy)
(joint with David Eil AEJ Microeconomics July 2011 The Power of Asking: How Communication Affects Selfishness, Empathy and Altruism
(joint with James Andreoni Journal of Public EconomicsJune 2011 (local copy) Press Coverage:
Freakonomics, Vox,
Wall Street Journal
Yahoo! Research
jmrao@yahoo-inc.com (work)
justinmrao@yahoo.com (personal)
Jim Andreoni, jandreoni@ucsd.edu
Preston McAfee, preston@mcafee.cc
Michael Schwarz, schwarz.m@gmail.com
Andy Skrypacz, andy@gsb.stanford.edu
Here, There and Everywhere: Correlated Online Behaviors Can Lead to Overestimates of the Effects of Advertising (local copy) (joint with Randall Lewis and David Reiley). Proceedings of World Wide Web Conference 2011 Research Papers
Using Gaze Patterns to Measure and Detect Distraction-induced Struggles While Reading (local copy) (joint with Vidhya Navalpakkam and Malcolm Slaney) Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference 2011 Extended Abstracts
Allocative and Dynamic Efficiency in NBA Decision Making (local copy) (joint with Matt Goldman) Proceedings of MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 2011 This is a shortened version of ``He Got Game" Theory (see below).
Press Coverage: Wall Street Journal , ESPN>.com, SlateEffort vs. Concentration: The Asymmetric Impact of Pressure on NBA Performance (joint with Matt Goldman) Proceedings of MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 2012
Press Coverage Wall Street Journal (Weekend Edition 3/17/2012), Business Week, ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine (Paper awared "ESPN Fan Choice" for best paper in the conference), Co-hosted ESPN "NBA Today" PodcastForthcoming Papers
The Economics of Spam: Strategic Games, Market Institutions and Externalities (with David Reiley). Accepted for publication at the Journal of Economic Perspectives Slated Fall 2012 issue.
Working Papers Avoiding the Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy and Charitable Giving: joint with James Andreoni and Hannah Trachtman.
NBER Working Paper 17648 On the Near Impossibility of Measuring Advertising Effectiveness (joint with Randall Lewis) Paper uses 25 advertising field experiments all reaching millions of "
"subjects" to show just how hard measuring advertising effectiveness. We also "prove" a "Super Bowl 'Impossibility' Theorem" calibrated with data from the paper. "He Got Game" Theory : Optimal Decision Making and the NBA (Now joint with Matt Goldman!) Posted 2/10/11. This paper has gone under heavy revision including the addition of a very talented co-author and a new dataset. Experts' Perceptions
of Autocorrelation: The Hot Hand Fallacy Among Professional Basketball
Players
Inference of Subjective Sequences: When the Gambler's Fallacy Becomes the Hot Hand Fallacy A lab experiment seeing how people predict sequences with subjective probability distributions.
I this case, tape recorded shots from NBA games. Paper finds transition from Gambler's Fallacy to Hot Hand Fallacy, as predicted by Rabin's model. Work in Progress Endgame. Time Preferences and Demand for Beliefs Two Weeks for the Apocalypse: joint with Ned Augenblick, Jesse Cunha and Ernesto Dal Bo.
Draft coming soon. Paper examines the beliefs of the recent "May 21st" Judgment Day group. Also has a theoretical model examining beliefs in the supernatural more generally. Display Advertising and Eyeballs
(joint with Vidhya Navalpakkam and Malcolm Slaney)