Abigail Sussman

Abigail Sussman, Associate Professor of Marketing at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, is interested in how consumers form judgments and make decisions, from underlying mechanisms to applications. She investigates questions at the intersection of consumer behavior, psychology, and economics, with the aim of improving human welfare. Her central research examines psychological biases that can lead consumers to commit errors in budgeting, spending, and borrowing. She also explores how the same biases extend beyond financial domains to choices in other areas.

Sussman’s prior experience includes work at Goldman Sachs in its equity research division. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in cognitive science and economics, and a joint PhD from the psychology department and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Research Activities

Judgment and decision making, consumer welfare, financial decision making, mental accounting, causal reasoning, political decision making

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Princeton University (2008 — 2013)
• BA Brown University (2000 — 2004)

Representative Publications

Homonoff, Tatiana, Rourke L. O’Brien and Abigail B. Sussman (Forthcoming).Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers. Review of Economics and Statistics.

Hartzmark, Samuel and Abigail B. Sussman (Forthcoming).Do Investors Value Sustainability? A Natural Experiment Examining Rankings and Fund Flows, Journal of Finance, 74(6). BNP Paribas Best Paper Award 2018. Moskowitz Prize 2018. Research Affiliates Best Paper Award 2018

Greenberg, Adam, Abigail B. Sussman, and Hal E. Hershfield.(2019).Financial Product Sensitivity Predicts Financial Health. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.

Zhang, C. Yiwei, and Abigail B. Sussman.(2018).Perspectives on Mental Accounting: An Exploration of Budgeting and Investing, Financial Planning Review, 1(1-2):e1011. Adapted from: The Role of Mental Accounting in Household Spending and Investing Decisions. In C. Chaffin (Ed.), Client Psychology. New York: Wiley.

Sussman, Abigail B., and Shannon M. White.(2018).Negative Responses to Taxes: Causes and Methods for Mitigation. Policy Insights in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5(2) 224-231.

Sussman, Abigail B. and Rourke L. O'Brien (in press). Knowing when to spend: Unintended financial consequences of earmarking to encourage savings. Journal of Marketing Research.

Sussman, Abigail B., Kristina Petkova, and Alexander Todorov, 2013. Competence ratings in the US predict presidential election outcomes in Bulgaria. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49 (4), 771-775.

Sussman, Abigail B., and Adam L. Alter, 2012. The exception is the rule: Underestimating and overspending on exceptional expenses. Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (December), 800-814.

Sussman, Abigail B., and Eldar Shafir, 2012. On assets and debt in the psychology of perceived wealth. Psychological Science, 23 (1), 101-108.

Sussman, Abigail B., and Christopher Y. Olivola, 2011. Axe the tax: Taxes are disliked more than equivalent costs. Journal of Marketing Research, 48 (November), 91-101.

Working Papers

Zhang, Shirley, Chris Hsee, and Abigail B. Sussman. The Dragging-Down Effect: Consumer Decisions in Response to Unit Price Increases (revise and resubmit, Journal of Consumer Research).

Hirshman, Samuel, and Abigail B. Sussman. More than the Minimum: Minimum Requirements Lead to Excess Dispersion in Allocation Decisions (revise and resubmit, Journal of Consumer Research).

Sussman, Abigail B., Anna Paley, and Adam L. Alter. Exceptional Consumption (revise and resubmit, Journal of Consumer Research).

Howard, R. Chuck, David J. Hardisty and Abigail B. Sussman. A Prototype Theory of Consumer Expense Misprediction (revise and resubmit, Journal of Marketing Research).

Sussman, Abigail B., Daniel M. Oppenheimer, and Matthew M. LaMonaca. Reconciling linear and heuristic models of cue weighting: A causal model approach.

Zhang, Shirley, Abigail B. Sussman and Chris Hsee. Responses to interest rate increases: An urgency paradox in repayment behavior.

Sussman, Abigail B. Valence in context: Asymmetric responses to positive and negative attributes.

Egan, Daniel, Sam Swift, and Abigail B. Sussman. Tax aversion in the wild: Increasing tax salience reduces allocation changes.