Robert D. Metcalfe
Visiting Associate Professor
Department of Economics
University of Southern California
Assistant Professor
Reidy Family Career Development Assistant Professorship
Markets, Public Policy, & Law
Questrom School of Business
Boston University
Faculty Research Fellow
National Bureau of Economic Research
I am an applied microeconomist, where my research focuses on using field experimental methods to understand human behavior in consumer markets and within organizations. A running theme in my research is to understand such behavior and the measurement of welfare in the presence of market imperfections and externalities.
Many of my projects have led to testing economic theory in collaboration with industry and government partners, such as Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Uber, Lyft, Opower, Oracle Utilities, Southern California Gas, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Walgreens Boots Alliance, Viasat, British Gas, British Telecom, San Antonio Water System (SAWS), the YMCA, the U.S. Social Security Administration, and the U.K. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
Working Papers:
Efficiency and Equity Impacts of Energy Subsidies.
Hahn, R., Metcalfe, R.
Revise and resubmitted (second round) at American Economic Review (paper completed but embargoed)
The Deadweight Loss of Social Recognition.
Butera, L., Morrison, W., Metcalfe, R., Taubinsky T. [Slides]
Revise and resubmitted at American Economic Review
Using Big Data to Estimate Consumer Surplus: The Case of Uber.
Cohen, P., Hahn, R., Hall, J., Metcalfe, R., Levitt, S.
Revision requested, Journal of Political Economy [Slides]
Larson, F., List, J., Metcalfe, R.
Reject and resubmit, Econometrica [Slides]
Smart Meters: Do Their Prices Matter to Their Adoption and Do They Save Energy?
List, J., Metcalfe, R., Price, M.
Revise and resubmit at the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
Fatalism, Beliefs, and Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Akesson, J., Ashworth-Hayes, S., Hahn, R., Metcalfe R., Rasooly, I.
Do the Effects of Social Nudges Persist? Theory and Evidence from 38 Natural Field Experiments.
Brandon, A., Ferraro, P., List, J., Metcalfe, R., Price, M., Rundhammer, F. [Slides]
The Making of Homo Honoratus: From Omission to Commission.
Hallsworth, M., List, J., Metcalfe, R., Vlaev, I.
Harnessing Policy Complementarities to Conserve Energy: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment.
List, J., Metcalfe, R., Price, M., Rundhammer, F.
The Value of Time in the United States: Estimates from a Nationwide Natural Field Experiment.
Goldszmidt, A., List, J., Metcalfe, R., Muir, I., Smith, K., Wang, J.. Coming soon.
Measuring Welfare in Regulated Markets.
Hahn, R., Metcalfe, R., Tam, E. Coming soon.
Metcalfe, R., Sollaci, A., Syverson, C. Coming soon.
The Income Elasticity of Energy Demand.
Hahn, R., Metcalfe, R., Tam, E. Coming soon.
Nudging Timely Wage Reporting: Field Experimental Evidence from the U.S. SSI Program.
Zhang, C.Y., Hemmeter, J., Kessler, J.B., Metcalfe, R., Weathers, R. Coming soon.
Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications:
Gosnell. G., List, J., Metcalfe, R. (2020)
Journal of Political Economy Lead article [Harvard Business Review] [Ungated PDF] [Slides]
Brandon, A., List, J., Metcalfe, R., Price, M., Rundhammer, F. (2019)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
Quantifying the Intangible Impact of the Olympics Using Subjective Well-Being Data.
Dolan, P., Kavetsos, G., Krekel, C., Mavridis, D., Metcalfe, R., Senik, S., Szymanski, S., Ziebarth, N. (2019)
Journal of Public Economics [Slides]
Burgess, S., Metcalfe, R., Proud, S. (2019)
Journal of Public Economics
The Behavioralist as Tax Collector: Using Natural Field Experiments to Enhance Tax Compliance.
Hallsworth, M., List, J., Metcalfe, R., Vlaev, I. (2017)
Journal of Public Economics
Bio:
Prior to joining Boston University, I was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Economics at the University of Chicago and a Research Fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford (Merton College). I have previously worked in the U.K. Government as an Economist, and had a short-term position as a Fellow at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of the U.S. President. I completed my Ph.D. and M.Sc. at Imperial College London and the London School of Economics respectively. I grew up in Swansea, UK. My CV is here. For more academic and policy papers, please see Google Scholar, RePEc.
I am also co-founder of two start-ups, The Behavioralist and Signol.