John A. List

Career John attended Sun Prairie High School, graduating in 1987. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming in 1996. He began his career at the University of Central Florida as an assistant professor in 1996. He became an associate professor in 2000 at the University of Arizona. In 2001 he was awarded a full professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park. He held that post until 2004, when he received an appointment as a full professor at the Economics Department of the University of Chicago.

In addition to his university career, List served as the first chief economist for taxi company Uber, and later for the similar company Lyft. List became the first chief economist for the Walmart corporation in April 2022.

Awards

In November 2014 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Tilburg University. In 2015 he was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society. In 2015 and 2016, he was named to the Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50. In 2017, he received the Hartsook Growing Philanthropy Award.

Work

His work focuses on microeconomic issues, and includes over 250 academic publications.

Behavioral economics List's research on behavioral economics has focused on testing theories like gift exchange, social preferences, and prospect theory. Traditional tests of these theories relied on recruiting undergraduate students to participate in experiments for a small amount of money. List instead recruited subjects in actual marketplaces to participate in experiments, sometimes unbeknownst to even the subjects. List's field experiments have found that gift exchange is not as powerful a motivator of labor effort as earlier research found, that social preferences are not as pronounced as prior research found, and that the divergence between Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept often called the endowment effect, predicted by prospect theory, disappears with market experience.

List's recent work in behavioral economics has found that framing can induce increased worker productivity, and has been picked up by several corporations around the world.

Environmental economics List has published research on the impact of environmental regulation on economic production and on endangered species. List's research has also focused on testing non-market valuation mechanisms in the field frequently used in contingent valuation and in testing different incentives to promote environmentally friendly technology adoption.

Charitable giving List has also brought social preferences and value of public goods to the marketplace by testing determinants of charitable giving. List has found that a number of the traditional techniques in the philanthropy world are not well understood. For example, the higher the announced seed money the more people give. Also, matching grants increase giving, but it doesn't matter if the match is 1:1 or 3:1. List has also found that giving is easily influenced by incentives that discount the importance of altruism in motivating giving. For example, List has found that beauty and social pressure are important motivators for giving. In an experiment through a solicitation mailed to 300,000 households in Alaska, List found that people are more likely to give because they want to feel good, rather than from pure altruism.

Some of his field experimental work on charitable fundraising were highlighted in The New York Times Magazine. In a 2009 Crain's Chicago Business article, List is referred to as a "rock star" in the area of philanthropy. In his role as Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising at Indiana's Lilly School of Philanthropy, he works to apply academic research for the benefit of fundraising practitioners. He also serves as principal investigator for the Science of Philanthropy Initiative.

Education List's recent research focuses on increasing educational achievement. In 2008 he worked with Chicago Heights, IL to design cash incentives for ninth graders and their parents to increase academic performance. In 2009 he won a $10 million grant from the Griffin Foundation to study the returns to pre-school education by beginning a research study called the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center (CHECC) and to test the impact of performance pay for teachers in Chicago Heights, IL.

The CHECC is aimed at studying programs that will decrease the achievement gap. The goal of CHECC is to intervene as early as possible to generate effects that are as great as possible.

Other research List has studied the economics of discrimination, finding that discrimination in marketplaces is statistical discrimination, rarely motivated by animus. He has also investigated gender differences in competition and wages, finding that men are more likely to apply for jobs that offer incentive pay than women. He has also researched the role of gender in competition in matrilineal and patriarchal societies, finding that women in matrilineal societies opt to compete at similar levels to men in patriarchal societies. List has also used experiments to test ideas in finance. He has tested the options model, information cascades, and the equity premium puzzle with undergraduate students and professional traders. Many of these ideas were advanced by List when he taught at the Finnish School of Finance in 2007 on field experiments in Finance.

Personal life List married pediatrician and surgeon Dana L. Suskind in 2018. They live in Hyde Park, Chicago, and have a blended family of eight children.

Academic publications List, John A., “Informed Consent in Social Science,” Science, October 21, 2008, 322(5886), p. 672. List, John A., “Homo experimentalis evolves,” Science, July 11, 2008, 321(5886), pp. 207–208. Levitt, Steven D. and John A. List, “Homo economicus evolves,” Science, February 15, 2008, 319(5865), pp. 909–910. Karlan, Dean and John A. List. “Does Price Matter in Charitable Giving? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment,” American Economic Review, (2007), 97(5), pp. 1774–1793. Harrison, Glenn W., John A. List, and Charles Towe, “Naturally Occurring Preferences and Exogenous Laboratory Experiments: A Case Study of Risk Aversion,” Econometrica, (2007), 75 (2): 433–458. Alevy, Jon, Michael Haigh, and John A. List. “Information Cascades: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Financial Market Professionals,” Journal of Finance, (2007), 62 (1): 151–180. List, John A. “On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games,” Journal of Political Economy, (2007), 115(3): 482–494. List, John A. and Daniel Sturm. “How Elections Matter: Theory and Evidence from Environmental Policy,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, (2006), November 121(4): 1249–1281. Gneezy, Uri, and John A. List. “Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments,” Econometrica, (2006), September, 74(5): 1365–1384. List, John A., “The Behavioralist Meets the Market: Measuring Social Preferences and Reputation Effects in Actual Transactions,” Journal of Political Economy, (2006), 114(1): 1-37. Landry, Craig, Andreas Lange, John A. List, Michael K. Price, and Nicholas Rupp. "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Charity: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, (2006), 121 (2): 747-782. Haigh, Michael and List, John A. “Do Professional Traders Exhibit Myopic Loss Aversion? An Experimental Analysis,” Journal of Finance, (2005), 60 (1): 523–534. List, John A. and Michael Haigh. “A Simple Test of Expected Utility Theory Using Professional Traders,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), 102(3): 945–948. List, John A. "Testing Neoclassical Competitive Theory in Multi-Lateral Decentralized Markets," Journal of Political Economy (2004), 112(5): 1131–1156. List, John A. Robert Berrens, Alok Bohara, and Joe Kerkvliet. "Examining the Role of Social Isolation on Stated Preferences," American Economic Review (2004), 94 (3): 741–752. Harrison, Glenn and John A. List. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature (2004), XLII (December): 1013–1059. List, John A. "Neoclassical Theory Versus Prospect Theory: Evidence from the Marketplace," Econometrica (2004), 72(2): 615–625. List, John A. “The Nature and Extent of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Evidence from the Field,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (2004), 119(1): 49–89. List, John A. “Does Market Experience Eliminate Market Anomalies?,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (2003), 118(1), 41–71. Pacala, Steven, Erwin Bulte, John A. List, and Simon Levin, "False Alarm over Environmental False Alarms," Science (2003), 301(5637), 1187–1189. List, John A. "Preference Reversals of a Different Kind: The More is Less Phenomenon," American Economic Review (2002), 92(5): 1636–1643. List, John A. and Lucking-Reiley, David. “The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign,” Journal of Political Economy (2002), 110(1): 215–233 List, John A. "Testing Neoclassical Competitive Market Theory in the Field," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2002), 99 (24): 15827–15830. List, John A. “Do Explicit Warnings Eliminate the Hypothetical Bias in Elicitation Procedures? Evidence from Field Auctions for Sportscards,” American Economic Review (2001), 91(5): 1498–1507. List, John A. and Lucking-Reiley, David. “Demand Reduction in a Multi-Unit Auction: Evidence from a Sportscard Field Experiment,” American Economic Review (2000), September, 90(4): 961–972. List John A. and Jason F. Shogren, “Calibration of the difference between actual and hypothetical valuations in a field experiment.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, (1998), 37 (2): 193–205.