Steven Tadelis
Professor of Economics | Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy | Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA, UNITED STATES
Leading expert on e-commerce and internet economics
Areas of Expertise (6)
E-Commerce
Competition and Industrial Organization
Procurement Contracting
Incentives and Economics of Organizations
Theory of the Firm
Game Theory
About
Steve Tadelis is a Professor of Economics and Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy at Berkeley Haas. His research primarily revolves around e-commerce and the economics of the internet.
During the 2016-2017 academic year he was on leave at Amazon, where he applied economic research tools to a variety of product and business applications and worked with technologists, computer and ML scientists, and business leaders. During the 2011-2013 academic years he was on leave at eBay research labs, where he hired and led a team of research economists who focused on the economics of e-commerce, with particular attention to creating better matches of buyers and sellers; reducing market frictions by increasing trust and safety in eBay's marketplace; understanding the underlying value of different advertising and marketing strategies; and exploring the market benefits of different pricing structures.
Aside from the economics of e-commerce, his main fields of interest are the economics of incentives and organizations, industrial organization, and microeconomics. Tadelis explored firm reputation as a valuable, tradable asset; the effects of contract design and organizational form on firm behavior with applications to outsourcing and privatization; public and private sector procurement and award mechanisms; and the determinants of trust.
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Education (3)
Harvard University: PhD, Economics
Techion, Haifa, Israel: MSc, Economics
University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel: BA, Economics
Links (3)
Honors & Awards (10)
Fellow of the Econometric Society
Elected 2020
Honorable Mention, Cheit Teaching Award, Full-Time MBA Program
2010 – 2011
Montias prize – best article published in the Journal of Comparative Economics
2010 – 2011
Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
2008 – 2015
Phi Beta Kappa Undergraduate Teaching Award, Stanford University,
2005
Department of Economics Advising Award, Stanford University
2002
W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow, Hoover Institution
1999 – 2000
Review of Economic Studies Euorpean Tour Speaker
May 1997
Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
1995 – 1996
National Science Foundation Research Grants
1999 – 2000, 2000 – 2002, 2003 – 2008
Selected External Service & Affiliations (6)
- 2016 – present, CESifo Research Network Fellow
- 2015 – present, Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
- 2014 – present, Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
- 2011 - 2014, Co-Editor, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization
- 2004 - 2007, Editorial Board, American Economic Review
- 2004 - 2007, Associate Editor, International Journal of Industrial Organization
Languages (1)
- Hebrew
Positions Held (1)
At Haas since 2005
2018 – present, Sarin Chair in Strategy and Leadership 2016 – 2018, James J. and Marianne B. Lowrey Chair in Business 2016 – 2017, VP of Economics and Market Design, Amazon.com Inc. 2015 – present, Professor of Economics, Business and Public Policy, Haas School of Business 2015 – 2016, Joe Shoong Chair in International business 2005 – 2015, Associate Professor, Haas School of Business 2011 – 2013, Senior Director and Distinguished Economist, eBay Research Labs 2006 – 2009, Associate Dean for Strategic Planning, Haas School of Business 1997 – 2005, Assistant Professor, Stanford University
Media Appearances (15)
Facebook Is Broken. Execs Say a Fix Won’t Come Fast.
Barron's online
2022-04-25
Facebook, now known as Meta, is struggling now despite the fact that it was “sitting on this treasure trove of people’s preferences,” said Professor Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy. “They know...where (users) are, their demographics, their age, friends, and education. And they knew you visited shoe websites, so now shoe ads are everywhere on your news feed.”
Study finds Trump’s support of vaccines may have swayed some vaccine skeptics
KRON4 online
2022-04-04
Research co-authored by Professor Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, found that an advertisement that showed former Pres. Donald Trump endorsing the Covid vaccine on Fox News increased vaccination rates. The researchers created a 27-second advertisement showcasing Trump’s support for the vaccine and placed it on videos across more than 150,000 YouTube channels in more than 2,000 counties across the country. “Creating an intervention that effectively costs about $1 per extra vaccine is remarkably cost-effective, and a small fraction of the cost of other interventions,” Tadelis said.
Trump Helped Boost Vaccine Use After Endorsement in Online Ads
Bloomberg online
2022-04-04
An online ad campaign featuring former president Donald Trump boosted vaccination rates in counties where rates of Covid-19 shots were lowest, according to research co-authored by Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy. In a campaign aimed at more than 1,000 counties across the U.S., researchers created an ad using a Trump appearance on Fox News telling people to get vaccinated, and then during October last year ran the video on YouTube in places with low vaccination rates. In the counties where the ad was shown, about 103 more vaccinations were given, on average, than in counties that didn’t get ads. (Also at KRON 4, KNX News In Depth (radio), and Science.org.)
Federal Government’s Crackdown On Broadway Ticket Service Fees Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Forbes online
2022-03-28
Government regulators can do little about services fees charged on Broadway tickets. Research by Professor Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, found that customers presented with fees after they selected tickets paid on average 21% more than customers presented with the fees upfront. “The results are pretty clear: if those fees were not hidden, then folks would buy fewer and cheaper tickets, lowering revenues for the ticket sellers quite a bit,” Tadelis said. “This is nothing less than a deceptive practice that should not, in my honest opinion, be allowed.”
Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses?
Freakonomics Radio online
2022-03-02
The academic literature on the impact of bosses is not particularly advanced and it can be hard to pinpoint just what effect a bad or good manager has. Research by Professor Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, found that a good boss seems capable of keeping the best employees happy, and presumably productive. Conversely, a bad boss might drive away the best employees.
Online inflation catches up
Marketplace online
2021-12-10
Prof. Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, said consumers don’t always get the bargain they think they’re getting online, and retailers know this. “If once in a while you get a so-called sucker to come by and buy at that (higher) price, maybe it’s just worth doing that,” he said.
2021 Most Disruptive MBA Startups: ScholarSite, U.C. Berkeley (Haas)
Poets & Quants online
2021-12-05
Nicholas Rudder, MBA 21, founded ScholarSite, a platform that allows academics and experts to independently run live cohort-based courses with companies around the world. “There is no doubt that the people I met during my MBA (both students and professors) were part of the journey of getting ScholarSite to where it is today,” he said, noting help he got from Prof. Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, and Continuing Lecturer Kurt Beyer.
Want to read a tech company’s user agreements? Got 90 minutes to spare?
Los Angeles Times online
2021-08-24
Do tech companies make their user agreements purposefully long and unclear? Prof. Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, said he believes they do so "rarely, if ever.“ "Some bad actors may try to use these tactics. But for the most part, I think it’s done to avoid frivolous litigation and reduce business uncertainty.”
Why Big Tech Companies Should Engage With Academia, and Why They Don’t
ProMarket online
2021-04-30
In this article, the author argues that big tech companies should hire a head of academic engagement, but admits "it has not happened, and probably it won’t happen." He mentions Prof. Steve Tadelis, who worked at eBay and Amazon, as an example of an academic who worked in big tech.
Subscriptions Are Getting Out of Hand. Here’s How to Manage Them.
The Wall Street Journal online
2021-03-21
Companies like the subscription model because the recurring revenue that comes in from subscriptions means big -- and reliable -- money, said Prof. Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy. Plus, some firms do take advantage of lazy unsubscribers, he added.
Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital) (Ep. 441)
Freakonomics Radio radio
2020-11-25
Prof. Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, talks about how his work with eBay led him to try to quantify whether digital ads worked. "The company believed that roughly 5% of sales were driven by paid-search advertising, meaning that they believed that if we would pull the plug on advertising, sales would drop by 5%," he said. "What we found was that sales dropped by about half a percent."
MA, CA & WA Best-Placed to Combat COVID-19 With Their Digital Economies
Storage Cafe online
2020-05-14
Prof. Steven Tadelis, the Sarin Chair in Leadership and Strategy, said California has a head start in its ability to leverage tech talent to go digital. "It’s clear that the current situation has shifted the attention to how much work and business transactions can be done remotely and this is one of main strengths of going digital," he said.
American government workers are feeling the shutdown’s financial impact
The Economist online
2019-01-23
The shutdown may have serious consequences for federal workers. A paper by Prof. Steven Tadelis, James J. and Marianne B. Lowrey Chair in Business, found that a surprisingly high share of federal workers live paycheck to paycheck, with about a third having virtually no cash in their bank accounts on payday.
The chart that shows the financial peril facing federal workers
The New York Times online
2019-01-16
In an op-ed co-authored by Steven Tadelis, Professor of Economics, Business and Public Policy, he writes that a large majority of government workers don't have enough money in the bank to cover expenses for two weeks.
California's economy could suffer if the government shutdown drags into February
CNBC online
2019-01-15
According to Steven Tadelis, Professor of Economics, Business and Public Policy and James J. and Marianne B. Lowrey Chair in Business, California's diverse economy will help it weather the shutdown. But he said it's possible that towns where a large percentage of federal workers are located could start to feel the pinch.
Working Papers (3)
Counter-stereotypical Messaging and Partisan Cues: Moving the Needle on Vaccines in a Polarized U.S.
2022-05-13
We report a large scale randomized controlled trial designed to assess whether the counter-stereotypical messaging and partisan cues can induce people to get COVID-19 vaccines. Our study involves creating a 27-second video compilation of Donald Trump's comments about the vaccine from Fox News interviews. We presented the video to millions of U.S. YouTube users in October 2021. Results indicate that the campaign increased the number of vaccines in the average treated county by 103. Spread across 1,014 treated counties, the total effect of the campaign was an estimate increase of 104,036 vaccines. The campaign was cost-effective: with an overall budget of about $100,000, the cost of an additional vaccine was about $1 or less.
The Limits of Reputation in Platform Markets: An Empirical Analysis and Field Experiment
January 2015 Steven Tadelis and Chris Nosko Reputation mechanisms used by platform markets suffer from two problems. First, buyers may draw conclusions about the quality of the platform from single transactions, causing a reputational externality. Second, reputation measures may be coarse or biased, preventing buyers from making proper inferences. We document these problems using eBay data and claim that platforms can benefit from identifying and promoting higher quality sellers. Using an unobservable measure of seller quality we demonstrate the benefits of our approach through a large-scale controlled experiment. Highlighting the importance of reputational externalities, we chart an agenda that aims to create more realistic models of platform markets. JEL classifications: D47, D82, L15, L21, L86
The Power of Shame and the Rationality of Trust
March 2011 Steven Tadelis A mounting number of studies suggest that individuals are not selfish, which perhaps explains the prevalence of trust among strangers. Models of players who care about their opponents' payoffs have been used to rationalize these facts. An alternative motive is that players care directly about how they are perceived by others. I propose and implement an experimental design that distinguishes perception motives from payoff motives. Participants not only exhibit concerns for perception, but they seem strategically rational by anticipating the change in behavior of their opponents. The approach can explain previously documented behaviors, both in the lab and in the field, and can shed light on some determinants of trust. JEL classifications C72, C91, D03, D82
Selected Papers & Publications (15)
People Management Skills, Employee Attrition, and Manager Rewards: An Empirical Analysis
Journal of Political Economy
Mitchell Hoffman and Steven Tadelis
2021-01-01
How much do a manager’s interpersonal skills with subordinates, which we call people management skills, affect employee outcomes? Are managers rewarded for having such skills? Using personnel data from a large high-tech firm, we show that survey-measured people management skills have a strong negative relation to employee turnover. A causal interpretation is reinforced by several research designs, including those exploiting new workers joining the firm and workers switching managers. However, people management skills do not consistently improve most observed non-attrition outcomes. Better people managers themselves receive higher subjective performance ratings, higher promotion rates, and larger salary increases.
Price Salience and Product Choice
Marketing Science
Tom Blake, Kane Sweeney, Sarah Moshary, and Steven Tadelis
2021-05-19
Online vendors often employ drip-pricing strategies, where mandatory fees are displayed at a later stage in the purchase process than base prices. We analyze a large-scale field experiment on StubHub.com and show that disclosing fees upfront reduces both the quantity and quality of purchases. The effect of salience on quality accounts for at least 28% of the overall revenue decline. Detailed click-stream data show that price shrouding makes price comparisons difficult and results in consumers spending more than they would otherwise. We also find that sellers respond to increased price obfuscation by listing higher-quality tickets.
Sequential Bargaining in the Field: Evidence from Millions of Online Bargaining Interactions
Quarterly Journal of Economics
Matt Backus, Tom Blake, Brad Larsen, and Steven Tadelis
2020-02-03
.We study patterns of behavior in bilateral bargaining situations using a rich new data set describing back-and-forth sequential bargaining occurring in over 25 million listings from eBay’s Best Offer platform. We compare observed behavior to predictions from the large theoretical bargaining literature. One-third of bargaining interactions end in immediate agreement, as predicted by complete-information models. The majority of sequences play out differently, ending in disagreement or delayed agreement, which have been rationalized by incomplete information models. We find that stronger bargaining power and better outside options improve agents’ outcomes. Robust empirical findings that existing models cannot rationalize include reciprocal (and gradual) concession behavior and delayed disagreement. Another robust pattern at odds with existing theory is that players exhibit a preference for making and accepting offers that split the difference between the two most recent offers. These observations suggest that behavioral norms, which are neither incorporated nor explained by existing theories, play an important role in the success of bargaining outcomes.
How Individuals Respond to a Liquidity Shock: Evidence from the 2013 Government Shutdown
Journal of Public Economics
Steven Tadelis, Michael Gelman, Shachar Kariv, Matthew Shapiro, Dan Silverman
2020-09-01
Using comprehensive account records, this paper examines how individuals adjusted spending and saving in response to a temporary drop in liquidity due to the 2013 U.S. government shutdown. The shutdown cut paychecks by 40% for affected employees, which was recovered within 2 weeks. Because the shutdown affected only the timing of payments, it provides a distinctive experiment allowing estimates of the response to a liquidity shock holding income constant. Spending dropped sharply, implying a naïve estimate of 58 cents less spending for every dollar of lost liquidity. This estimate overstates the consumption response. While many individuals had low liquid assets, they used multiple sources of short-term liquidity to smooth consumption. Sources of short-term liquidity include delaying recurring payments such as for mortgages and credit card balances.
Buying Reputation as a Signal of Quality: Evidence from an Online Marketplace
Rand Journal of Economics
Steven Tadelis, Lingfang (Ivy) Li, and Xiaolan Zhou
2020-02-11
Seller reputation, generated by buyer feedback, is critical to fostering trust in online marketplaces. Marketplaces or sellers may choose to compensate buyers for providing feedback. Signaling theory predicts that only sellers of high-quality products will reward buyers for truthful feedback, especially when a product lacks any feedback and when the seller is not established. We confirm these hypotheses using Taobao's reward-for-feedback mechanism. High-quality products, especially without established feedback, are chosen for feedback rewards, which cause sales to increase by 36%. Marketplaces and consumers can therefore benefit from allowing sellers to buy feedback and signal their high-quality products in the process.
On the Empirical Content of Cheap-Talk Signaling: An Application to Bargaining
Journal of Political Economy
Matt Backus, Tom Blake, and Steven Tadelis
2019-08-01
We outline a framework for the empirical analysis of signaling games based on three features: sorting, incentive compatibility, and beliefs. We apply it to document cheap-talk signaling in the use of round-number offers during negotiations. Using millions of online bargaining interactions, we show that items listed at multiples of $100 receive offers that are 8–12 percent lower but are 15–25 percent more likely to sell, demonstrating the trade-off requisite for incentive compatibility. Those same sellers are more likely to accept a similar offer, and buyers are more likely to investigate their listings, consistent with seller sorting and buyer belief updating.
Reputation and Feedback Systems in Online Platform Markets
Annual Review of Economics
Steven Tadelis
2016
Information Disclosure as a Matching Mechanism: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment
American Economic Review
Steven Tadelis, Florian Zettelmeyer
2015
Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment
Econometrica
Steven Tadelis, Chris Nosko, Tom Blake
2015
Harnessing Naturally-Occurring Data to Measure the Response of Spending to Income
Science
Steven Tadelis, Michael Gelman, Shachar Kariv, Matthew D. Shapiro, Dan Silverman
2014
Bidding for Incomplete Contracts: An Empirical Analysis
American Economic Review
Steven Tadelis, Pat Bajari, Stephanie Houghton
2014
Auctions versus Negotiations in Procurement: An Empirical Analysis
Journal of Law, Economics and Organization
Steven Tadelis, Patrick Bajair, and Robert McMillan
2009
Profit Sharing and the Role of Professional Partnerships
Quarterly Journal of Economics
Steven Tadelis and Jonathan Levin
2005
The Market for Reputations as an Incentive Mechanism
Journal of Political Economy
Steven Tadelis
2002
Complexity, Flexibility and the Make-or-Buy Decision
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings
Steven Tadelis
2002
Teaching (3)
Economic Analysis for Business Decisions
MBA 201A
The Economics of Institutions
PhD
Mechanism Design and Agency Theory
Economics 206, PhD
Social