Steve Tadelis

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. Some of his past research aspired to advance our understanding of the roles played by two central institutions—firms and contractual agreements—and how these institutions facilitate the creation of value. Within this broader framework, 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.

Awards & Honors

• Honorable Mention, Cheit Teaching Award, Full-Time MBA Program, 2010-2011
• Montias prize – best article published in the Journal of Comparative Economics in 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 European Tour Speaker, May 1997
• Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 1995-1996
• National Science Foundation Research Grants: 1999-2000, 2000-2002, 2003-2008, 2016-2018

Expertise and Research Interests

• E-Commerce
• Competition and Industrial Organization
• Procurement Contracting
• Incentives and Economics of Organizations
• Theory of the Firm
• Game Theory

Selected Papers and Publications

• Steven Tadelis. Reputation and Feedback Systems in Online Platform Markets. Annual Review of Economics. 2016
• Steven Tadelis, Florian Zettelmeyer. Information Disclosure as a Matching Mechanism: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment. American Economic Review. 2015
• Steven Tadelis, Chris Nosko, Tom Blake. Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment. Econometrica. 2015
• Steven Tadelis, Michael Gelman, Shachar Kariv, Matthew D. Shapiro, Dan Silverman. Harnessing Naturally-Occurring Data to Measure the Response of Spending to Income. Science. 2014
• Steven Tadelis, Pat Bajari, Stephanie Houghton. Bidding for Incomplete Contracts: An Empirical Analysis. American Economic Review. 2014
• Steven Tadelis, Patrick Bajair, and Robert McMillan. Auctions versus Negotiations in Procurement: An Empirical Analysis. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. 2009
• Steven Tadelis and Jonathan Levin. Profit Sharing and the Role of Professional Partnerships. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2005
• Steven Tadelis. The Market for Reputations as an Incentive Mechanism. Journal of Political Economy. 2002
• Steven Tadelis. Complexity, Flexibility and the Make-or-Buy Decision. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. 2002
• Steven Tadelis, Michael Gelman, Shachar Kariv, Matthew Shapiro, Dan Silverman. How Individuals Respond to a Liquidity Shock: Evidence from the 2013 Government Shutdown. Journal of Public Economics.
• 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.