TY - JOUR
T1 - It's Good to be First
T2 - Order Bias in Reading and Citing NBER Working Papers.
AU - Feenberg, Dan
AU - Ganguli, Ina
AU - Gaule, Patrick
AU - Gruber, Jonathan
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - When choices are made from ordered lists, individuals can exhibit biases toward selecting certain options as a result of the ordering. We examine this phenomenon in the context of consumer response to the ordering of economics papers in an e-mail announcement issued by the NBER. We show that despite the effectively random list placement, papers listed first each week are about 30% more likely to be viewed, downloaded, and subsequently cited. We suggest that a model of “skimming” behavior, where individuals focus on the first few papers in the list due to time constraints, would be most consistent with our findings.
AB - When choices are made from ordered lists, individuals can exhibit biases toward selecting certain options as a result of the ordering. We examine this phenomenon in the context of consumer response to the ordering of economics papers in an e-mail announcement issued by the NBER. We show that despite the effectively random list placement, papers listed first each week are about 30% more likely to be viewed, downloaded, and subsequently cited. We suggest that a model of “skimming” behavior, where individuals focus on the first few papers in the list due to time constraints, would be most consistent with our findings.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85013665456
U2 - 10.1162/REST_a_00607
DO - 10.1162/REST_a_00607
M3 - Article
SN - 0034-6535
VL - 99
SP - 32
EP - 39
JO - Review of Economics and Statistics
JF - Review of Economics and Statistics
IS - 1
ER -