Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh
COLIN D. SULLIVAN
Experimental Economics, Labor Economics, Market Design
ABOUT ME
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. I use experiments to study labor markets, organ markets, and other matching markets, with a focus on eliciting preferences through incentive design. I received my PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
​​
​​
Contact me at cdsulliv@gmail.com.
RESEARCH
INCENTIVIZED RESUME RATING: ELICITING EMPLOYER PREFERENCES WITHOUT DECEPTION (WITH JUDD B. KESSLER AND CORINNE LOW)
American Economic Review, 2019, Vol. 109 (11): 3713–44. Online Appendix
We introduce a new experimental paradigm to evaluate employer preferences, called Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR). Employers evaluate resumes they know to be hypothetical in order to be matched with real job seekers, preserving incentives while avoiding the deception necessary in audit studies. We deploy IRR with employers recruiting college seniors from a prestigious school, randomizing human capital characteristics and demographics of hypothetical candidates. We measure both employer preferences for candidates and employer beliefs about the likelihood candidates will accept job offers, avoiding a typical confound in audit studies. We discuss the costs, benefits, and future applications of this new methodology.
Revise & Resubmit, Review of Economic Studies
Optimal allocation of scarce, life-saving medical treatment depends on society's preferences over survival distributions, governed by notions of equality and efficiency. In a novel experiment, I elicit preferences over survival distributions in incentivized, life-or-death decisions. Subjects allocate an organ transplant among real cats with kidney failure. In each choice, subjects allocate a single organ based on the expected survival of each patient. The survival rates imply a price ratio, allowing me to infer the shape of indifference curves over survival bundles. I find that the vast majority (80%) of subjects respond to increases in total expected survival time, while a small minority display Leontief preferences, providing the transplant to the shortest-lived patient at all price ratios. Hypothetical decisions may not be reliable in this context: a large share (46%) of subjects allocate a hypothetical transplant differently than a real transplant, though estimates of aggregate preferences are the same across incentivized and unincentivized conditions. Finally, I show that aversion to wealth inequality is a good predictor of aversion to survival inequality.
PATERNALISTIC DISCRIMINATION (WITH NINA BUCHMANN AND CARL MEYER)
Revise & Resubmit, Econometrica
We combine two field experiments in Bangladesh with a structural labor model to identify paternalistic discrimination, the differential treatment of two groups to protect one group, even against its will, from harmful or unpleasant situations. We observe hiring and application decisions for a night-shift job that provides worker transport at the end of the shift. In the first experiment, we use information about the transport to vary employers' perceptions of job costs to female workers while holding taste-based and statistical discrimination constant: Not informing employers about the transport decreases demand for female labor by 21%. Employers respond more to transport information than cash payments to female workers that enable workers to purchase transport themselves. In the second experiment, not informing applicants about the transport reduces female labor supply by 15%. In structural simulations, paternalistic discrimination has a larger effect on gender employment and wage gaps than taste-based and statistical discrimination.
LEARNING TO MANIPULATE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON OUT-OF-EQUILIBRIUM TRUTH-TELLING (WITH CLAYTON R. FEATHERSTONE AND ERIC MAYEFSKY)
Working Paper
In two-sided settings, market designers tend to advocate for deferred acceptance (DA) over priority mechanisms, even though theory tells us that both types of mechanisms can yield unstable matches in incomplete information equilibrium. However, if match participants on the proposed-to side deviate from equilibrium by truth-telling, then DA yields stable outcomes. In a novel experimental setting, we find out-of-equilibrium truth-telling under DA but not under a priority mechanism, which could help to explain the success of DA in preventing unraveling in the field. We then attempt to explain the difference in behavior across mechanisms by estimating an experience-weighted learning model adapted to this complex strategic environment. We find that initial beliefs drive the difference in agents’ ability to find strategic equilibria, rather than alternative explanations such as differences in the learning process.
THE DEPENDENCY TRAP (WITH CUIMIN BA AND NINA BUCHMANN)
Work in Progress
THE STUBBORNNESS GAP (WITH CHRISTINE EXLEY, HANNU KIVIMÄKI, AND KIRBY NIELSEN)
Work in Progress
BREAKING THE CYCLE: A CRAVING-BASED MODEL OF HABITS AND BINGES (WITH ZHONGHENG QIAO)
Work in Progress
EDUCATION
PHD IN APPLIED ECONOMICS
May 2019
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
​
Dissertation: Essays in Matching Markets
Committee Chair: Judd B. Kessler
Committee: Clayton R. Featherstone, Corinne Low
AM IN STATISTICS
Harvard University
May 2014
AB IN ECONOMICS; POLITICAL SCIENCE
The University of Chicago
June 2009