Social, Behavioral and Experimental Economics Seminar: David Ong, Michigan State University
Abstract
Scalar indices compress multidimensional information into rankings used throughout markets and economic analysis. Estimated at one market stage---for example, as a callback-based trade-off over applicant attributes—such representations are often carried, as controls or directional benchmarks, into analyses of later-stage allocations and outcomes. Whether that representation remains sufficient for counterfactual or welfare analysis is rarely tested. We develop a five-part diagnostic framework for testing whether and where sufficiency fails and probing possible mechanisms, and apply it to rankings identified in a randomized online-dating experiment varying male height and income, then evaluated in urban marriages observed in the nationally representative CFPS. The diagnostics reveal failures along several distinct margins. Search-stage rankings differ across chooser groups, rejecting a common ranking in the source environment. In the full marriage sample, equivalence fails: husbands assigned the same transported search-ranking value differ systematically in expected wife height. The equilibrium height–income gradient runs opposite to the compensating trade-offs encoded by the search rankings. Reciprocal demand provides evidence on a possible two-sided mechanism that may limit the extent to which search rankings govern equilibrium allocation. Match-produced outcomes provide suggestive, but few-cluster-sensitive, evidence against additive separability in partners’ heights. Thus, rankings valid where they are estimated need not remain sufficient for equilibrium allocation. The framework applies whenever a scalar representation constructed or estimated in one environment—field, laboratory, or survey—is used in another.
Link to Paper
About the SBEE Seminar Series
The Social, Behavioral and Experimental Economics seminar series brings together a community of economics scholars from three units at the University of Michigan — the School of Information, the Department of Economics and the Ross Business School — whose research aims to broaden the understanding of the social, economic and political consequences of real-life decisions and behaviors.
Top researchers from around the globe come to Michigan to present their work at the SBEE seminar series, exploring the intersection of economics, psychology, computer science and information science.
The seminar series is organized by U-M faculty members Yan Chen (UMSI), Alain Cohn (UMSI), Erin Krupka (UMSI), Stephen Leider (Ross), Christine Exley (Econ), A. Yesim Orhun (Ross), Tanya Rosenblat (UMSI), Karthik Srinivasan (UMSI) and Basit Zafar (Econ). Todd Stuart and Robin Kocher serve as seminar coordinators.
Featured Speaker
David Ong
Michigan State University
David Ong is an applied microeconomist and Visiting Scholar at Michigan State University. From 2018 to 2026, he was Professor of Economics at the Jinan University–University of Birmingham Joint Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Davis.
His research combines field experiments, online-platform data, and household surveys to study search, matching, and when scalar rankings fail to capture multidimensional preferences and equilibrium outcomes. His other work examines gender differences in competitiveness, marriage markets, the labor-market beauty premium, coauthorship, price dispersion, and choice overload.
His research has appeared in the Journal of Development Economics, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, and Economics Letters.
Contact: [email protected]