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Economics

A collection of 67 issues

What's Best? Comparing Model Outputs

Let’s assume that you have a large portfolio of messages: n messages of k types. And say that there are n models, built by different teams, that estimate how relevant each message is to the user on a particular surface at a particular time. How would you rank order

The Benefit of Targeting

What is the benefit of targeting? Why (and when) do we need experiments to estimate the benefits of targeting? And what is the right baseline to compare against? I start with a business casual explanation, using examples to illustrate some of the issues at hand. Later in the note, I

The Value of Predicting Bad Things

Foreknowledge of bad things is useful because it gives us an opportunity to a. prevent it, and b. plan for it. Let’s refine our intuitions with a couple of concrete examples. Many companies work super hard to predict customer ‘churn’—which customers are not going to use a product

Optimal Sequence in Which to Service Orders

What is the optimal order in which to service orders assuming a fixed budget? Let's assume that we have to service orders $o_1,…,…o_n$, with the n orders iterated by $i$. Let's also assume that for each service order, we know how the costs

Optimal Sequence in Which to Schedule Appointments

Say that you have a travel agency. Your job is to book rooms at hotels. Some hotels fill up more quickly than others, and you want to figure out which hotels to book at first so that your net booking rate is as high as it could be with the

Targeting 101

Targeting Economics Say that there is a company that makes more than one product. And users of any one of its products don’t use all of its products. In effect, the company has a \textit{captive} audience. The company can run an ad in any of its products about

Taking a Holiday from Looking for Jobs

Incentives to Care

A lot of people have their lives cut short because they eat too much and exercise too little. Worse, the quality of their shortened lives is typically much lower as a result of avoidable' illnesses that stem frombad behavior.’ And that isn’t all. People who are not feeling

Companies With Benefits or Potential Welfare Losses of Benefits

Many companies offer employees ‘benefits.’ These include paying for healthcare, investment plans, company gym, luncheons etc. (Just ask a Silicon Valley tech. employee for the full list.) But why ‘benefits’? And why not cash? A company offering a young man a zero-down health care plan seems a bit like within-company

Toward a Two-Sided Market on Uber

Uber prices rides based on the availability of Uber drivers in the area, the demand, and the destination. This price is the same for whoever is on the other end of the transaction. For instance, Uber doesn’t take into account that someone in a hurry may be willing to