Farhan Zaidi's PhD Dissertaton

[Dickie Billericay]

Who is Farhan Zaidi?  Dodger fans already know, but for most everyone else:

Farhan Zaidi is the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Zaidi was born in Canada and raised in the Philippines. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PHD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He briefly worked for the Boston Consulting Group and the Sporting News website between MIT and Berkeley.

While at Berkeley, he read the book Moneyball and it changed his life. He saw a job posting for a baseball operations position with the Oakland Athletics and sent out his resume, beating out 1,000 other applicants for the job. He was a data analysis sabermetrics assistant when he started. His boss with the Athletics, Billy Beane called him "absolutely brilliant" and credited him with the acquisition of Cuban star Yoenis Céspedes.

For the 2013 season he was promoted by the Athletics to the post of Director of Baseball Operations and added Assistant General Manager to his title in 2014.

On November 6, 2014, he was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers as their new General Manager.

Zaidi is one of two Muslim executives in Major League Baseball. He is of Pakistani ancestry. He is the first Muslim General Manager of any American pro sports franchise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhan_Zaidi

Note that he didn't get 15 buddies to write the thing for him, although he does admit to "joint work" with another in developing a model of prospective memory.  Considering this was done at Berkeley I imagine a little "joint work" is pretty much a prerequisite. 

I particularly liked the way he cited a work by one of his committee members (Stefano DellaVigna) on the first page.  In fact, it's the very first resource cited in the document.  This guy definitely knows what to kiss and when.

Here's the abstract, in case you don't want to plow through all 87 pages (yup, just 87 including title page, references, acknowledgement and appendix).  As the deceased blowhard Uncle "284 Pages" Janko proved, when you don't have any real clue what you're talking about you pretty much need to write a phone book.

Abstract
Top of Mind in Task-Based Environments and Choice Under Risk
by
Farhan Zaidi
Doctor of Philosophy in Economics
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Matthew Rabin, Chair

I examine psychological biases that influence “top-of-mind” status in task-based environments and choice under risk, and the implications of those biases for predicting and explaining consumer behavior in the field. I develop (in joint work with Jeff Holman) a model of prospective memory, defined as the capacity to recall tasks to be carried out in the future. Motivated by the economics and psychology literature on overconfidence, we introduce memory overconfidence into the model, and show that it leads to 1) inefficiently low rates of task completion, and 2) the prediction that the probability of task completion may vary inversely with the length of time allocated to completing the task. We discuss two instances where consumers face tasks that broadly fit our model – submitting rebates and cancelling negative-option subscriptions.

I then present empirical evidence of this latter instance through a field experiment with a membership-based website. I find that implementing “camouflage” pricing – that is, charging amounts such as $20.13 or $19.83 rather than “standard” amounts such as $20 or $19.95 – significantly lowers cancellation rates. Assuming that credit card statements can serve as a reminder to cancel unused subscriptions, and that the strength of this reminder is greater with standard amounts that tend to “stand out” on a bill and draw more attention than camouflage amounts, the lower cancellation rates in the camouflage-pricing groups are consistent with the prediction of our prospective memory model.

I also consider how what is top of mind may affect consumers’ choices under risk. I exploit a “natural experiment” from the trading card industry to find evidence that existing models of choice under risk may understate the extent to which salient outcomes affect the valuation of risky prospects. I track auction sales of a particular card that experienced a sudden jump in value, as well as auction sales of the sealed, unopened card boxes into which this card was randomly inserted at known odds. I estimate the price jumps for both the single card and the unopened boxes, and back out the “decision weight” that would reconcile these price movements. The estimated decision weight is well beyond the range of previous experimental estimates. I discuss how consumers’ attention to particularly salient or vivid outcomes (i.e., the extent to which they are top of mind) may provide an explanation for the result.

  FarhanZaidiDissertation.pdf (Size: 679.64 KB / Downloads: 17)