Eric M. Overby
Associate Professor of IT Management | Scheller College of Business at Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA, UNITED STATES
Eric Overby's research focuses on the transition from physical to electronic modes of interaction and its effect on market efficiency.
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Biography
Eric Overby's research has appeared in academic journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, and the European Journal of Information Systems. His research has received awards from scholarly organizations such as INFORMS and the Academy of Management, including the Best Published Paper of 2008 award and the Best Program Paper of 2010 award from the Organizational Communication and Information Systems division of the Academy of Management. He received the Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award from the INFORMS Information System Society in 2015; the Linda and Lloyd Byars Award for Faculty Research Excellence from the Scheller College in 2015; and he was one of three finalists for the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGMIS Best Dissertation Award in 2007. Overby was one of two recipients (out of 221 junior faculty) of Georgia Tech's university-wide Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence award in 2011 and was the first Scheller College faculty member to receive this award since 1993. He also received the James F. Frazier Jr. Award for Teaching Excellence in 2011. He received the 2012 Best Reviewer Award for his service to Information Systems Research; the Meritorious Service awards for his service to Management Science in 2013 and 2015; and he is an associate editor at Management Science.
Overby's research focuses on the transition from physical to electronic modes of interaction and the effect this has on market efficiency. His research and teaching have been supported by grants from the NET Institute, the Rich Foundation, and the National Auto Auction Association.
Dr. Overby joined the Scheller College of Business faculty in the fall of 2007 after completing his Ph.D. at Emory University.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Online Lending
Blockchain
Electronic commerce and electronic markets
Migration of physical processes to virtual environments
Geographic trade, market efficiency, and spatial arbitrage
Selected Accomplishments (5)
James F. Frazier, Jr. Award for Teaching Excellence, Georgia Institute of Technology (professional)
Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011
Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award
INFORMS Information Systems Society, 2015
Meritorious Service Award
Awarded by Management Science, 2013, 2015
Linda and Lloyd L. Byars Award for Faculty Research Excellence
Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015
Young Researcher Award
Workshop on Health IT and Economics for the paper “Improving the Malpractice System: Effect of EMRs on Claim Resolution Time?” (Paper co-authored with Sam Ransbotham and Michael Jernigan), 2013
Education (2)
Emory University: Ph.D., Information Systems 2007
Goizueta Business School
University of Georgia: BA, Journalism 1994
Minor: French. University of Georgia Foundation Fellow, First Honor Graduate, Summa Cum Laude, With Highest Honors.
Affiliations (1)
- Management Science : Associate Editor
Links (1)
Event Appearances (5)
Is Offering Social Network Service Integration Valuable for a Web Site? A Randomized Field Experiment
Proceedings of the Thirty- Fifth International Conference on Information Systems Auckland, NZ
2014-12-01
Does Information Technology Improve Market Efficiency? Evidence from Arbitrage in the Automotive Market
Proceedings of the Thirty-First International Conference on Information Systems St. Louis, MO
2010-12-01
Does Information Technology Increase or Decrease Hospitals Risk? An Empirical Examination of Computerized Physician Order Entry and Malpractice Claims
Proceedings of the Thirty-First International Conference on Information Systems St. Louis, MO
2010-12-01
Does Individuals’ Adoption of New Technologies Supplement or Substitute for Incumbent Technologies?
Best Paper Proceedings of the 2010 Academy of Management Meeting Montreal, QC
2010-08-01
The Market Is Flat (Or Is It?) The Effect of Electronic Trading on Buyer Reach, Geographic Transaction Activity, and Geographic Price Variance
Proceedings of the Thirtieth International Conference on Information Systems Phoenix, AZ
2009-12-01
Selected Articles (5)
How Do Adopters Transition Between New and Incumbent Channels?
Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business Research Paper No. 2016-51
Eric M. Overby, Sam Ransbotham
2016 There is substantial knowledge about how individuals and organizations – which we refer to collectively as entities – adopt and use new channels. However, less is known about how this relates to their use of the incumbent channel that the new channel may replace, particularly how this relationship varies across entities and over time. We study this both theoretically and empirically. First, we develop and validate a new typology of how entities’ use of new and incumbent channels evolves over time. Second, we generate novel insights about the post-adoption use behaviors of entities that adopt the new channel at approximately the same time. Third, we analyze how entities’ use of new and incumbent channels varies based on time of entry, which is when an entity first becomes active with either channel. Fourth, we identify and validate other explanatory variables for why entities transition between states of new/incumbent channel use. Our results contribute to theory about the adoption/diffusion of new channels, and they contribute to practice by giving managers tools to understand and predict how entities’ use of new and incumbent channels evolves over time.
Electronic Commerce, Spatial Arbitrage, and Market Efficiency
Information Systems Research
H Subramanian, E Overby
2016 Electronic commerce can improve market efficiency by helping buyers and sellers find and transact with each other across geographic distance. We study the effect of two distinct forms of electronic commerce on market efficiency, which we measure via the existence and exploitation of spatial arbitrage opportunities. Spatial arbitrage represents a more precise measure of market efficiency than does price dispersion, which is typically used, because it accounts for the transaction costs of trading across distance and for unobserved product heterogeneity. One of the forms of electronic commerce that we study is a webcast channel that allows electronic access to the traditional physical market, while the other is a standalone electronic market. Both forms provide traders with expanded reach to find and transact with each other across geographic distance, but only one allows traders to conduct transactions immediately, at any time. This variance helps us isolate the effect of these mechanisms (reach and transaction immediacy) on efficiency. We find that electronic commerce reduces the number of arbitrage opportunities (likely by expanding traders’ geographic reach) but improves arbitrageurs’ ability to identify and exploit those that remain (likely by expanding arbitrageurs’ reach and providing them with the immediacy to exploit opportunities quickly). Overall, our results suggest that electronic commerce improves market efficiency not only by helping buyers and sellers transact across distance (thereby balancing supply and demand across geographic locations) but also by helping arbitrageurs quickly exploit any remaining arbitrage opportunities (thereby rebalancing supply and demand across geographic locations).
How Reduced Search Costs and the Distribution of Bidder Participation Affect Auction Prices
Management Science
Eric Overby, Karthik Kannan
2015 Electronic commerce allows bidders to find and participate in auctions regardless of location. This reduction in bidders’ search costs has important effects on bidders’ participation patterns and sellers’ revenue. The “demand expansion” effect occurs when reduced search costs allow bidders to participate in more auctions. The “demand distribution” effect occurs when reduced search costs allow bidders to distribute themselves more evenly across auctions. We focus on the latter effect by modeling when a more even distribution of bidder participation across auctions increases seller revenue. We apply our analytical insights to 65,718 sequential auctions (comprising over 10 million vehicles) in the wholesale used vehicle market. We show that reduced search costs can increase seller revenue by smoothing the distribution of bidder participation across auctions, even if the aggregate amount of bidder participation remains constant. This contributes new results to the auction theory literature and generates novel insights for sellers seeking increased revenue.
The Effect of Electronic Commerce on Geographic Purchasing Patterns and Price Dispersion
Management Science
Eric Overby, Chris Forman
2014 The “law of one price” states that if prices for the same or highly similar goods vary across geographic locations by more than the cost of transport, then traders will shift supply and demand to exploit the price differences. However, several frictions prevent traders from doing this, including lack of information about prices and difficulty trading across locations. Electronic commerce has the potential to reduce these frictions by increasing price visibility and lowering transaction costs. We analyze this by studying how the diffusion of an electronic channel affected geographic trading patterns and price dispersion in the wholesale used vehicle market from 2003 to 2008. We find that buyers used the channel to shift their demand geographically to exploit price differences, which reduced geographic price dispersion. We find that the electronic channel also influenced how sellers distributed supply, but we find little evidence that this led to reduced geographic price dispersion.
Physical and Electronic Wholesale Markets: An Empirical Analysis of Product Sorting and Market Function
Journal of Management Information Systems
Eric Overby & Sabyasachi Mitra
2014 Markets can yield significant economic benefits by improving transaction efficiency, but effective design is necessary to achieve these benefits. We compare a physical market to a discrete electronic market in the wholesale used vehicle industry to evaluate how their different designs work for different types of transactions. We find that buyers and sellers balance adverse selection costs and other transaction costs when using the two markets, with the physical market serving as the general exchange and the electronic market serving as a spot market for vehicles with low adverse selection risk. These findings increase our understanding of how sellers and buyers distribute supply and demand between physical and electronic markets in industries in which they coexist. They also increase our understanding of how information technology can improve market function in wholesale environments.