Showing posts with label reputation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reputation. Show all posts

Friday, May 21, 2021

Journal of controversial ideas

  Some ideas are controversial not just because some people think they are bad ideas, but because they think that they are the kinds of ideas that only bad people have.  So writing about them, let alone advocating them, may have reputational costs.  Here's a new (open access) journal that offers authors the option of publishing under a pseudonym if they wish, to avoid the harassment, hate mail and death threats that would otherwise come their way.

Journal of controversial ideas

"The Journal of Controversial Ideas offers a forum for careful, rigorous, unpolemical discussion of issues that are widely considered controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically objectionable or offensive. The journal offers authors the option to publish their articles under a pseudonym, in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety.  We hope that this will also encourage readers to attend to the arguments and evidence in an essay rather than to who wrote it. Pseudonymous authors may choose to claim the authorship of their work at a later time, or to reveal it only to selected people (such as employers or prospective employers), or to keep their identity undisclosed indefinitely. Standard submissions using the authors’ actual names are also encouraged."

Editors: 

Jeff McMahan (White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK)

Francesca Minerva (Researcher, University of Milan)

Peter Singer (Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University, USA)

And Here's the first issue, with several pseudonymous contributions.

Peter Singer discusses the journal at Project Syndicate:

Keeping Discussion Free

"A new academic journal permits authors to use a pseudonym to avoid running the risk of receiving personal abuse, including death threats, or of irrevocably harming their careers. That option has become necessary even in countries that we do not think of as repressive dictatorships."


Thursday, February 25, 2021

Art museums selling art: relaxing the repugnance against "deaccessioning"

 Here's an interesting look at the ways professional organizations can influence the behavior of their members by endorsing changes in social norms. In this case the association in question is the Association of Art Museum Directors.

The NY Times has the story:

Facing Deficit, Met Considers Selling Art to Help Pay the Bills. Like many museums, the Met is looking to take advantage of a relaxation of the rules governing art sales to care for collections.  By Robin Pogrebin

"Like many institutions, the Met is looking to take advantage of a two-year window in which the Association of Art Museum Directors — a professional organization that guides its members’ best practices — has relaxed the guidelines that govern how proceeds from sales of works in a collection (known as deaccessioning) can be directed.

"In the past, museums were permitted to use such funds only for future art purchases. But last spring, the association announced that, through April 10, 2022, it would not penalize museums that “use the proceeds from deaccessioned art to pay for expenses associated with the direct care of collections.”


Here's the AAMD announcement:

ASSOCIATION OF ART MUSEUM DIRECTORS’ BOARD OF TRUSTEES APPROVES RESOLUTION TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL FLEXIBILITY TO ART MUSEUMS DURING PANDEMIC CRISIS

It says in part:

"The resolutions state that AAMD will refrain from censuring or sanctioning any museum—or censuring, suspending or expelling any museum director—that decides to use restricted endowment funds, trusts, or donations for general operating expenses."


HT: Itay Fainmesser

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Lies, damn lies, and internet conspiracy theories

 One reason lies spread faster than true stories on social media is that lies can be designed to be clickbait, while the truth is constrained by the facts.  This has been notably true with stories about election fraud, but it is by no means confined to lies originating at the top.

The Washington Post has the story:

Big Tech still hasn’t figured out how to make truth spread faster than lies--Warnings from Twitter and Facebook were the equivalent of slapping the “PARENTAL ADVISORY” labels from album covers on the president of the United States.    By Geoffrey A. Fowler

"President Trump tweeted that America’s election was being stolen, and Twitter put labels over his lies over a dozen times and counting. “This tweet is disputed and might be misleading,” it warned.

...

"But as tech products, the labels were too little, too late. There’s scant evidence that labels make a lick of difference to viewers. Moreover, they didn’t stop the flow of toxic election content on social media. That’s because social media’s business model is toxic content.

...

"when we look back on the 2020 election, we’ll remember it for the domestic disinformation campaigns and alternate-reality bubbles that grew, in part, because of technology designed to amplify them. This was the year where some 70 candidates for office embraced at least parts of the wacky QAnon online conspiracy theory, and one of them — Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — got elected to Congress.

...

"There is one way labels could definitely be effective, disinformation experts agree: by making it physically harder to share misinformation — adding speed bumps to the information superhighway.

"Facebook said Friday it had added a mini speed bump: forcing people to look at an additional message before they could share a flagged post.

"Twitter was the only one that made a significant speed bump effort on election night. Trump’s tweets covered by warning labels had to be clicked on to be seen, and didn’t show retweet and like counts. And they couldn’t be shared without adding your own context on top.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Reputation among thieves: ransomware and kidnapping

Like everyone else, I occasionally get notifications of data breaches from organizations with which I have digital relations.  Often the breach involved a third party.  Sometimes the breach involves the theft of data accompanied by a demand of ransom--i.e. the victim is invited to pay the cybercriminal, who then promises to destroy the data instead of selling it on the dark web or otherwise using it.

This bears some resemblance to the kidnapping business, and its high-seas version, piracy.

Here's part of an email I recently received informing me of such a breach, and subsequent payment of ransom.

"I’m writing to inform you that Blackbaud, the company that hosts [xxx’s] relationship management system, suffered a security incident in May. Blackbaud is the world’s largest provider of fundraising technology for non-profits and educational institutions, and many organizations have been impacted by this incident.
...
"We were also informed by Blackbaud that in order to protect data and mitigate potential identity theft, it met the cybercriminal’s ransomware demand. Blackbaud has advised us that it received assurances from the cybercriminal and third-party experts that the data was destroyed. Blackbaud has been monitoring the web in an effort to verify the data accessed by the cybercriminal has not been misused. "
************
Why should "assurances from the cybercriminal" be reassuring? (and for how long?).  And what are the roles played by "third-party experts"?

My guess is that, as in the kidnapping biz, intermediaries have emerged to conduct the negotiations, get some sort of assurances, and make it possible for criminal organizations to maintain reputations for honor among thieves.

It is of course possible to regard ransom paying as a repugnant transaction that facilitates ransomware, kidnapping, etc.  In fact the U.S. for some time made it a crime to pay ransom to kidnappers, but relaxed that view over time, as kidnapping became a bigger international business, and there was often a considerable desire (sometimes covered by insurance) to pay ransom when it seemed the best way to recover the kidnapped person alive.

Here are some related posts which touch on that story:

Monday, June 24, 2019  Kidnapping insurance

Tuesday, September 13, 2016 Ransom as a (not so) repugnant transaction

Monday, August 9, 2010 Brokers for pirate ransom

Saturday, December 5, 2009 Market for kidnapping

Sunday, November 30, 2008 Pirate ransom: counterparty risk

Monday, January 20, 2020

Recommender systems behaving badly: YouTube and Instagram

Why are readers drawn to sensationalist stories?  Why do content providers produce them?  It likely has something to do with the recommender systems that direct readers' attention to certain stories more than to others.

Time magazine has the YouTube story:

YouTube Has Been 'Actively Promoting' Videos Spreading Climate Denialism, According to New Report

"YouTube has been “actively promoting” videos containing misinformation about climate change, a report released Thursday by campaign group Avaaz claims, despite recent policy changes by the platform intended to drive users away from harmful content and conspiracy theories.
"The “up next” feature dictates what users watch for 70% of the time they spend on YouTube. The exact make-up of the YouTube algorithm that drives recommendations, designed to keep users on the platform for as long as possible, is a closely guarded secret. Experts say the algorithm appears to have learned that radical or outrageous content is more likely to engage viewers.Avaaz examined 5,537 videos retrieved by the search terms “climate change,” global warming” and “climate manipulation,” and then the videos most likely to be suggested next by YouTube’s “up next” sidebar. For each of those search terms respectively, 8%, 16% and 21% of the top 100 related videos included by YouTube in the “up-next” feature contained information that goes against the scientific consensus on climate change – such as denying climate change is taking place, or claiming that human activity is not a cause of climate change. Avaaz claims this promotion process means YouTube is helping to spread climate denialism."
...
"The “up next” feature dictates what users watch for 70% of the time they spend on YouTube. The exact make-up of the YouTube algorithm that drives recommendations, designed to keep users on the platform for as long as possible, is a closely guarded secret. Experts say the algorithm appears to have learned that radical or outrageous content is more likely to engage viewers.

**********
The NY Times has the Instagram story
This Is the Guy Who’s Taking Away the Likes
"Likes are the social media currency undergirding an entire influencer economy, inspiring a million Kardashian wannabes and giving many of us regular people daily endorphin hits. But lately, Mr. Mosseri has been concerned about the unanticipated consequences of Instagram as approval arbiter.
...
"Mr. Mosseri knows something about dealing with dystopian tech fallout. He came to Instagram in October 2018 after years overseeing the Facebook News Feed, an unwitting engine of fake news, inflammatory rhetoric and disinformation. He wants to avoid similar pitfalls at Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Designing effective reputation systems, by Donaker, Kim, and Luca in HBR

The Nov-Dec 2019 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article offering some strategies for designing a reputation system that will have a better chance of being well populated and reliable:

Designing Better Online Review Systems
Geoff Donaker, Hyunjin Kim, Michael Luca

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Reputation in online marketplaces

Two recent NBER papers tell us about trust, quality, and reputation in online marketplaces.

BUYING REPUTATION AS A SIGNAL OF QUALITY:
EVIDENCE FROM AN ONLINE MARKETPLACE
Lingfang (Ivy) Li, Steven Tadelis, Xiaolan Zhou
Working Paper 22584, http://www.nber.org/papers/w22584

ABSTRACT: Reputation is critical to foster trust in online marketplaces, yet leaving feedback is a public good that can be under-provided unless buyers are rewarded for it. Signaling theory implies that only high quality sellers would reward buyers for truthful feedback. We explore this scope for signaling using Taobao's "reward-for-feedback" mechanism and find that items with rewards
generate sales that are nearly 30% higher and are sold by higher quality sellers. The market design implication is that marketplaces can benefit from allowing sellers to use rewards to build reputations and signal their high quality in the process.
**********

Michael Luca
Working Paper 22616, http://www.nber.org/papers/w22616

ABSTRACT: Online marketplaces have proliferated over the past decade, creating new markets where none existed. By reducing transaction costs, online marketplaces facilitate transactions that otherwise would not have occurred and enable easier entry of small sellers. One central challenge faced by designers of online marketplaces is how to build enough trust to facilitate transactions between strangers. This paper provides an economist’s toolkit for designing online marketplaces, focusing on trust and reputation mechanisms.

Monday, July 25, 2016

Trust and crime: Reputation in the (illegal) market for sex

Quartz has an article on how sex workers can vet new customers, in the age of the internet: Sex workers have created the perfect method for keeping people honest online. (I like the url better than the headline: http://qz.com/621994/trust-and-crime/

"If you work at Goldman Sachs in New York City and you want to tie up a woman and then have sex with her, there’s a good chance you’ll first have to speak to Rita.
She’ll insist on calling your office, speaking to the switchboard operator, and being patched through to your desk. Then she will want to check out your profile on the company website and LinkedIn. She’ll demand you send her message from your work email, and require a scan of either your passport or driver’s license.
...
"Mid-range prostitution is a relatively new market, enabled by technology. Before the internet, it was hard for escorts to find customers: They had to either walk the streets searching for customers (the lower end of the market), rely on word-of-mouth, or work with agencies. Walking the streets was dangerous, while agencies ate up a large share of workers’ profit and autonomy, and created a bottleneck to entering the market. The internet changed all that.

“Before the internet, agencies provided the steady flow of clients and screening, but their capacity was capped,” Baylor University economist Scott Cunningham said. Soon after Craigslist launched in 1995, US escorts quickly started marketing directly to customers online. This newfound ability to advertise on the internet grew the market, said Cunningham, because more women and men could work independently
...
"Even criminals need someone they can trust

"If you’re selling something illegal, you can’t rely on the law to make sure the buyer upholds their end of the deal. Once the bill comes, clients might turn violent, or turn out to be cops. That means trust commands a large premium and that’s the centerpiece of Rita’s business model: watertight background checks on would-be johns.

"Rita represents sex workers who offer BDSM in addition to sex. When rough play is on the list of services you offer, a high level of trust is essential; hence, Rita’s elaborate screening process, which can take days. “I am looking to weed out police and crazies,” she said. She estimates that only one in four potential customers ultimately passes. Those who do win some time with a professional escort/dominatrix, but it comes at a hefty price: Each hour can cost up to $800, and Rita’s cut is 30%."

Monday, September 21, 2015

eBay is 20

The Guardian has a nice column by John Naughton noticing that eBay is 20 years old this month, and suggesting that one of it's biggest innovations was its early reputation system:

How eBay built a new world on little more than trust--The ratings system introduced by the biggest car boot sale on earth is now used by everyone from Uber to Airbnb

Friday, May 22, 2015

The market for early book reviews: commercial, crowd sourced, and bootleg

My book, Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design isn't due to be published until June 2.  But there are already some reviews, from commercial reviewers (Kirkus Reviews), from crowd sourced  reviews from Amazon, and at least one of what looks like a bootleg review from someone writing for Newsweek Europe, who may have ignored the label on the boxes of books warning folks to respect the June 2 "publication date" (the books will be in stores by then, so they are floating around).


The Amazon reviewing process is through what they call Vine Customer Review of Free Product, which they describe as follows:

"Amazon Vine invites the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make informed purchase decisions. Amazon invites customers to become Vine Voices based on their reviewer rank, which is a reflection of the quality and helpfulness of their reviews as judged by other Amazon customers. Amazon provides Vine members with free products that have been submitted to the program by participating vendors. Vine reviews are the independent opinions of the Vine Voices. The vendor cannot influence, modify or edit the reviews. Amazon does not modify or edit Vine reviews, as long as they comply with our posting guidelines. A Vine review is identified with the green stripe Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program."

They classify the reviews as positive or critical, so far there are 15 positive and 1 critical, here's the critical one:
Showing 1-1 of 1 reviews (critical)show all reviews
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format: HardcoverVine Customer Review of Free ProductWhat's this? )
Note: Advance Reading Copy

Alvin E. Roth, Nobel Prize laureate in economics has written a comfortable and conversational book explaining complex concepts of market design for the lay person. A more apt title, I think would be Problems, Challenges and Solutions in Market Design or Marketing Design for Dummies. “Who Gets What and Why” makes this book sound simple. It is not. It is also not for every casual reader with a mild curiosity.

Dr. Roth defines and explains the new economics of market design which he says brings science to matchmaking. He shows how market design helps solve problems that existing market places haven’t been able to solve naturally.

The author discusses his design of clearing houses for markets that are not commodity markets like: the kidney exchange; the medical labor market; new labor markets for Ph.D.s in economics and school choice systems in New York and Boston.

He defines the challenges and solutions and explains that to achieve efficient outcomes, market places need to make markets:

Thick: Those with enough potential transitions available at one time.
Congested: Enough time for offers to be made and/or accepted or rejected.
(and) Safe to participate in.

He defines matching markets where one can’t just choose, but must also be chosen.
He gives concrete examples to explain his concepts like attributes of three different kinds of restaurants. He discusses design inventions to make markets smarter, thicker and faster.

This book is detailed. It reads like Dr. Roth has taken pains to be clear about those details.

For more in dept discussion of market design you can watch Dr. Roth’s lecture at Stanford University on the web.

Thos book is not for everyone, but is worth the effort to gain new insight and understanding of markets and “Who Gets What.”

Monday, September 8, 2014

You can do a lot of good if you don't worry about who gets the credit

Shane Greenstein's' piece on false claims of credit for inventing email got me thinking about the larger question of attributing and claiming credit (especially after I initially mis-identified Shane as his co-blogger JG who shared the post to G+...).  Often, accomplishments have many parents. (And sometimes someone who helps disseminate the news is mistakenly credited as its source.)

Market design in particular is an outward facing part of economics, and much of what needs to be accomplished requires economists to play a helping role. So I've always liked the sentiment in the title of this post, whose origins turn out to be (fittingly) hard to attribute. Quote Investigator looks into it and finds many early origins and variations.

[1] A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.

[2] This was the opportunity for a man who likes to do a good thing in accordance with the noble maxim … “Never mind who gets the credit.”

[3] The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them.

[4] There is no limit to what a man can do who does not care who gains the credit for it.

"These sayings are certainly not identical, but they are closely interlinked thematically. Quotation number [1] appeared in a diary entry from the year 1863 in which the words were recorded as spoken by a Jesuit Priest named Father Strickland. This is the earliest citation located by QI.
In 1896 the text of [2] was published, and the phrase “Never mind who gets the credit” was dubbed the noble maxim of Edward Everett Hale.
In 1905 quotation [3] was published, and the words were attributed to Benjamin Jowett who was a theologian and classical scholar at Oxford University. But one of the author’s who made this attribution decided it was flawed, and in a later book he reassigned credit for the saying from Jowett to a “Jesuit Father”. This is probably a reference to Father Strickland. This maxim is the same as quote [A] given by the questioner above.
Expression [4] was used by Charles Edward Montague in 1906, but he did not claim coinage of the phrase. He said it was the favorite saying of his friend and colleague the journalist William T. Arnold. But Montague did not credit Arnold as originator either. He left the attribution anonymous by using the locution “someone has said”.
In 1922 Montague published a close variant of saying [4], “There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit”, in his book “Disenchantment”. For this reason he is sometimes cited in modern texts and databases.
Finally, quotation [B] which is similar to [4] appeared in the 1980s on a small plaque atop the desk in the Oval Office of the White House during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan."

[B] There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Shane Greenstein on a false history of email

Sometimes people believe that they deserve more credit than they're getting, and Shane Greenstein writes about a man who believes he should be credited with inventing email.  (Earlier this morning I mistakenly identified the author of the post as Shane's co-blogger Joshua Gans; apologies to both.) Apparently the fellow who thinks he invented email and should get the credit for it is pretty clearly mistaken, but the Huffington Post took the bait, and so Shane organizes his post about how that makes HuffPo a much less trustworthy news source than he had hoped. (Apparently some things on the internet just aren't true...)  HuffPo and the Loss of Trust

"Now for the detail: HuffPo published a multipart history of email that is historically inaccurate. Yes, you read correctly. More specifically, a few of the details are correct, but those are placed next to some misleading facts, and these are embedded in a certifiably very misleading historical narrative. The whole account cannot be trusted.
The account comes from one guy, Shiva Ayyadurai, who did some great programming as a teenager. He claims to have invented electronic mail in 1978 when he was fourteen. He might have done some clever programming, but electronic mail already existed by the time he did his thing. Independent invention happens all the time in technological history, and Shiva is but another example, except for one thing. He had his ideas a little later than others, and the other ideas ended up being more influential on subsequent developments. Shiva can proudly join the long list of geeky teenagers who had some great technical skills at a young age, did some cool stuff, and basically had little impact on anybody else.
Except that Shiva won’t let it go. This looks like nothing more than Shiva’s ego getting in the way of an unbiased view.
Look, it is extremely well established that the email systems in use today descended from a set of inventors who built on each other’s inventions. They did their work prior to 1978. For example, it is well documented that the “@” in every email first showed up in 1971. Ray Tomlinson invented that. Others thought it was a good idea, and built on top of the @. We all have been doing it ever since. Moreover, this is not ancient history. Tomlinson has even written about his experiences, and lots of people know him. This is easy to confirm.
Though Ayyadurai’s shenanigans were exposed a few years ago, he persists. In the HuffPo piece yet again he pushes the story in which his inventions played a central place in the history of electronic mail. This time he has a slick infographic telling his version of things, and he managed to get others to act as shills for his story. He also now accuses others of fostering a conspiracy against his views in order to protect their place in history and deny him his.As if. “A teenager invented electronic mail” might be a great headline, and it might sound like a great romantic tale, but this guy is delusional."
Shane focuses on trust in news sources, but I can't help sympathize a bit with the delusional guy.  I know of many cases in which someone feels, often with considerable justice, that they don't get the credit they deserve. That's part of the problem with apportioning credit, and it may be a near universal feeling. You can certainly witness it among academics, and probably also among top athletes who don't make it to the Olympic podium or the Hall of Fame, and maybe even among some of those who do. Maybe a good sanity check on whether you are delusional is if you think there's a conspiracy...

Sunday, January 8, 2012

School choice: what makes schools popular in Boston

One of the benefits of a strategy-proof school choice mechanism is that it yields meaningful data on parent preferences.  The Boston Globe has a story describing some of those preferences, as revealed through the rankings of schools submitted for the school choice algorithm. (The reporter, Akilah Johnson, thinks that some good schools are being missed, and that the poorest families often fail to participate in the school choice system.)

Popularity matters in school lottery: The district’s hidden gems struggle to gain attention from parents.

""The principal of Higginson-Lewis K-8 School and one of her first-grade teachers stood amid a swirl of school-shopping families at the Showcase of Schools, waiting to deliver their sales pitch.
...
"It’s like being a Hilton Hotel in between two Ritzes,’’ Simmons, the first-grade teacher, said of the schools to her right and left, Hernandez K-8 and Kilmer K-8, both with more applicants than prekindergarten seats. The inverse is true at Higginson-Lewis, making it one of the least sought-after schools in Boston - at least according to a school district tally akin to a judge’s score sheet.

"The city uses a lottery system that was intended to give all students access to high-achieving classrooms, regardless of neighborhood or life circumstance. But families fixate on a collection of well-known, fiercely sought-after schools, largely ignoring those with lesser reputations. And over the past two decades, popularity has often become a proxy for quality, making it even harder for schools to get off that second rung.

"Popularity is driven by parents with time, inclination, and sometimes the means to enter the school lottery early, armed with information and expectations. Their preferences create a system of prized schools, and those in low demand - schools whose reputations have suffered because they are in higher-crime neighborhoods, serve predominantly poor students, and have, in some cases, test scores lower than average.
...
"Each year, the district creates a “demand report’’ to help inform parents’ decisions. It shows how many parents listed a school among their top three picks. Parents look at the list and seize on schools they like, but also immediately see the schools they want to avoid, schools they often know little about.
...
"The answer lies in who is, and who is not, choosing a school and when they choose. Popular schools have become synonymous with the choices of white middle-class families, principals and families say. And the demand report reflects the choices of families who choose early.

"Oliver said parents of color and those in low-income communities “don’t always go in to make choices when the lottery starts. We have a lot of people who can’t make a commitment until June or even Labor Day.’’
...
"The lottery system was created in the name of giving parents more choice. Still, Boston’s dreams of equal access to quality remain deferred, with many of the least-selected schools lacking racial and economic diversity. The Higginson-Lewis has only 10 white students in a school of about 425, and Marshall has just eight white students in a school of 713.

“People will come to visit and they will say: ‘How many white students are in the class? I don’t want my child to be the only one,’ ’’ said Oliver, the Higginson principal.
...
"Middle-class parents often aren’t willing to send their children to a school next to Malcolm X Park in Roxbury or on a street sandwiched between Geneva Avenue and Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, where neighborhood violence has, at times, landed on the school’s doorstep.
...
"School choice is “pretty complicated stuff, and people are always eager to come up with pretty simple solutions,’’ said Curt Dudley-Marling, a Boston College professor who studies patterns of school failure and success. “It always seems to me that it’s rigged for parents who have the most resources.’’

"Not all families have the benefit of active parent groups that organize school tours to help families vet their options, which in Boston could mean as many as 20 public school options, not including charters. Single parents, families new to the country, parents of disabled children, or families struggling with the demands of life often are unable to investigate every option.

“I can’t imagine they have time, much less the resources, to go to fairs and all these things,’’ Dudley-Marling said. Instead, they, like most people, default to what they have heard within their circle of influence."

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Mike Luca on Yelp

My colleague Mike Luca (whose work I wrote about here when he was still a grad student) has a paper on the influence of Yelp reviews on restaurant revenues.

It's recently been receiving some attention both locally at HBS working knowledge, and in the larger blogosphere: One-Star Bump On Yelp Leads To Big Revenue Boost, Study Finds

Here's the abstract of his paper:
"Do online consumer reviews affect restaurant demand?  I investigate this question using a novel dataset combining reviews from the website Yelp.com and restaurant data from the Washington State  Department of Revenue.   Because  Yelp prominently displays a restaurant's rounded average rating,  I can  identify the  causal  impact of Yelp ratings on demand with a  regression discontinuity framework that exploits Yelp‟s rounding thresholds.  I present three findings about the impact of consumer reviews on the restaurant industry: (1) a one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a  5-9 percent increase in revenue, (2) this effect is driven by independent restaurants; ratings do not affect restaurants with chain affiliation, and (3) chain restaurants have declined in market share as Yelp penetration has increased. This suggests that  online  consumer reviews substitute for more traditional forms of reputation. I then test whether  consumers use these reviews  in a way that is consistent with standard  learning models.  I present  two additional findings: (4) consumers do not use all available information and are more responsive to quality changes that are more visible and (5) consumers respond more strongly when a rating contains more information.  Consumer response to a restaurant‟s average rating is affected by the number of reviews and whether the reviewers are certified as “elite” by Yelp, but is  unaffected by the size of the reviewers‟ Yelp friends network." "

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Will reputation and crowd sourcing facilitate alternative forms of peer review?

That's the question raised in a (gated) article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a proposal to publish papers online, and then have them subject to comment: 'Facebook of Science' Seeks to Reshape Peer Review

"Mr. Tracz plans to turn his latest Internet experiment, a large network of leading scientists called the Faculty of 1000, into what some call "the Facebook of science" and a force that will change the nature of peer review. His vision is to transform papers from one-shot events owned by publishers into evolving discussions among those researchers, authors, and readers.
...
"The core function of F1000 is to allow members to highlight any newly published paper that they consider interesting and give it a points rating of six (recommended), eight (must read), or 10 (exceptional). Many members give network access to a junior colleague who helps them rate publications.


"Members say in a sentence or two why they find the paper interesting. Readers then are able to attach their own comments to the F1000 site. (Authors can appeal comments they consider unreasonable.)
...
"For Mr. Tracz, this objective leads inevitably back to the more grandiose goal of upending the existing publishing system. "There are two big issues, for science and for publishing," he says. "One is peer review, and one is the publishing of data." While many researchers and publishers consider prepublication peer review to be, at worst, a necessary evil, Mr. Tracz is scathing about its weaknesses. "Except for a tiny little part at the top, where it is done seriously, peer review has become a joke. It is not done properly, it delays publication unnecessarily, it is open to abuse, and is being abused. It is seriously sick, and it has been for a while."

Friday, August 27, 2010

The market for attention: recommender engines for Twitter

How to decide what to pay attention to? A paper discusses several possible models for recommender engines for tweets: Short and Tweet: Experiments on Recommending Content from Information Streams by Jilin Chen, Rowan Nairn, Les Nelson, Michael Bernstein, and Ed H. Chi

Saturday, July 31, 2010

The market for boasting

How did people boast signal before they had blogs?

Not long ago I was the subject of a flattering profile in Forbes (which I wrote about in this earlier blog boast post).
Yesterday I received a letter in the mail from a company that "specializes in turning articles into custom designed plaques."

It's not a bad idea, and if I were a restaurant, I'd buy one right away, and post it next to the menu, preferably where it could be read from the street.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Peer to peer overnight accommodations

The NY Times reviews sites of "social network bed and breakfasts" on which you can reserve rooms for overnight stays in cities around the world: Europe Without Hotels.

The sites have various ways to protect against scams:

"In Paris, AirBnB has places in every arrondissement, including $13-a-night rooms in the western suburbs and $285-a-night houseboats on the Seine. As the first Web site of its kind to grab the headlines, the system has already developed a large and loyal user base. Some properties have as many as 70 user-generated reviews, which give paying guests a greater sense of confidence. It is similar to how eBay works: you’re more likely to buy from an eBay seller with good feedback." ...

"After the brief tour, I gave Mr. Mostaedi the code that allows him to collect my payment from iStopOver. That’s one of the safeguards that iStopOver offers to guests. If a listing turns out to be fraudulent or misstated, you can refuse to give the owner the code, and the fee is refunded in full. Other services offer similar protections: AirBnB withholds a host’s payment until 24 hours after guests check into an accommodation in order to fend off potential scammers, and Crashpadder uses credit card payments to verify guest identities (though it says it will monitor but not otherwise involve itself in any disputes)."
Here are the sites mentioned:
"AIRBNB.COM
AirBnB.com, founded in 2007 in San Francisco, is the largest of this new generation of social B&Bs and has the most user reviews.
Where: About 5,378 cities in 146 countries.
Accommodations: Air mattresses to entire villas.
Price: In New York, from $10 for a room to $3,000 for a loft.
ISTOPOVER.COM
IStopOver, founded in 2009 in Toronto, specializes in big events, like this summer’s World Cup in South Africa.
Where: Mostly North America, Europe and South Africa.
Accommodations: Apartments and houses.
Price: $10 to $8,000 a night.
CRASHPADDER.COM
Founded in 2008 in London, Crashpadder.com operates mostly in Britain, with a surge expected during the 2010 Olympics in London.
Where: 898 cities, including more than 1,000 listings in London.
Accommodations: Bedrooms to houses.
Price: From £15 (about $21 at $1.43 to the pound) a night, plus £3 booking fee.
ROOMORAMA.COM
Founded in 2008, Roomorama.com focuses on higher-end properties, especially in New York City.
Where: 36 cities, including more than 1,000 listings in New York.
Accommodations: Bedrooms to houses.
Price: From $30 to $5,000, plus an 8 to 12 percent booking fee. "

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mathoverflow.net

Mathoverflow.net is an internet site on which people can ask and answer math questions. It elicits a good deal of effort for free, in an Open Science, reputation-mediated way.

It has a reputation system, based on the votes "up" your questions and answers get. Other users can also reduce your reputation by 2 points, at a cost of 1 point to themselves, if they don't like your posts.

There's also a set of distinctions that users can earn, called badges.

HT: Aaron Roth

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Peer review and markets for ideas, in law and science

Most scientific journals involve "peer review," where the peers in question are supposed to be experts on the subject of a particular submitted article. Because reviewers' time is scarce, the presumption is that a paper submitted to a peer reviewed journal is not currently being submitted anywhere else. The author submits the paper, and waits for a review (either a rejection, a revise-and-resubmit, or an acceptance). Depending on the field and the journal this can happen quickly, or (for economics journals) slowly.

Law Reviews are different. Authors submit to multiple journals simultaneously, and the papers are reviewed not by peers but by the third year law students who edit that year's edition of their law school's Review. And well-received authors don't get "acceptances" they get "offers" to publish, which typically have a short deadline, e.g. 24 hours. In that time they can contact one of the other law reviews to whom they have submitted the paper and try to get it accepted there.


For example, the submissions page of the University of Chicago Law Review has the following invitation to ask for an Expedited Review: "If you have received a formal offer of publication from another journal and would like to receive an expedited review by the University of Chicago Law Review, please contact us at lrarticles[at]law.uchicago.edu. When requesting an expedited review, please put "Expedite" as the subject of your email and include in the text:
1) The author name and title of your manuscript; 2) The name of the journal that has extended an offer to you; 3) The date that the offer expires; 4) The phone number or email address of a contact person at that journal;5) An electronic attachment of your article (plus C.V. or cover letter) to facilitate and accelerate the process. The University of Chicago Law Review will attempt to honor all requests for expedited review for which the above information is provided. ..."


But there is an experiment afoot to change the way law review articles are reviewed, and to try to have peer review while still allowing authors to submit to multiple journals simultaneously: Mainstream law review tries peer review

The idea is to have the reviews done first in a clearinghouse called the Peer Reviewed Scholarship Marketplace "The Peer Reviewed Scholarship Marketplace (“PRSM”), a consortium of student-edited legal journals, exists to provide student-editors with peer evaluations of legal-scholarship manuscripts and to assure the publication of quality articles. PRSM connects authors and journals with subject matter experts, who through their reviews provide editors with the information they need to make informed decisions regarding article selection. With PRSM, the future of legal-scholarship publishing has arrived."

"The Peer Reviewed Scholarship Marketplace (“PRSM”) began with the South Carolina Law Review’s Peer Review Pilot Program... Numerous authors submitted manuscripts to the South Carolina Law Review, and many other legal scholars and practitioners volunteered to serve as peer reviewers. Relying on the reviewers’ evaluations, the South Carolina Law Review chose three articles for publication in a special Peer Review Issue (Volume 60, Book 4). This special issue also featured a favorable foreword by Judge Richard A. Posner as well as an essay describing the South Carolina Law Review’s experience with peer review.
The Pilot Program’s success encouraged the creation of PRSM, a consortium of student-edited legal journals that believe that peer review can enhance the quality of the articles that journals select and ultimately publish. PRSM works much like the familiar manuscript submission vehicle ExpressO but with a peer review component. Authors submit their work exclusively to PRSM, whose administrators then arrange for double-blind peer review of each manuscript. After six weeks, PRSM members will receive a copy of the article with the reviews, which will assist the student-editors in publication decisions. As with ExpressO, members will make their own independent offers to authors, who are free to accept or decline. If an author is unsatisfied with all offers—or receives none after a designated date—he or she is free to resubmit his or her reviewed manuscript through ExpressO or another preferred vehicle.
PRSM thus benefits all parties: authors, reviewers, journals, and the legal community that relies on scholarship published in student-edited journals. All authors receive valuable feedback from their peers, and successfully placed authors further benefit from the “peer reviewed” certification of their published manuscripts. Reviewers are offered an opportunity to comment on new scholarship pertinent to their areas of expertise and thereby participate in the “gate-keeping” article selection process. Student-edited journals are given an additional tool to spot and select the most novel and valuable research for publication. Finally, PRSM’s peer review process produces higher quality scholarship for the legal community that reads and relies on the profession’s journals.
For more information about South Carolina Law Review’s experience with the Peer Review Pilot Program and creation of PRSM, go here."

Apparently law journals in the UK are more like economics journals than like American law reviews, in that authors can only submit to one journal at a time, and submissions are peer reviewed (see Comparative journal submission experiences by John Ip).


In the meantime, a peer-review holdout in the sciences is moving to peer review. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the journal published by the honorific society from which it takes its name, had a tradition of allowing NAS members to "communicate" papers without a refereeing process. For some time now that has coexisted with a peer review process; some papers are reviewed, others simply communicated. Next year that will come to an end, and all papers will be reviewed: PNAS will eliminate Communicated submissions in July 2010.

The problem is that communicated papers were apparently of very uneven quality. (Some biologists I know claim that PNAS stands for "post-Science and Nature," as papers are only sent there after being rejected by those two other journals.) And while there is a very sensible scientific tradition of simply ignoring bad papers, some of the ones that appeared were apparently embarassing: Peer Review Failure?

Peer review is undoubtedly a part of the answer to the larger question about why journals persist at all given the growth of the internet: Why Hasn’t Scientific Publishing Been Disrupted Already?