It’s Good to Be First: Order Bias in Reading and Citing NBER Working Papers

Daniel Feenberg (), Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaulé and Jonathan Gruber
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Jonathan Gruber: MIT and NBER

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2017, vol. 99, issue 1, 32-39

Abstract: When choices are made from ordered lists, individuals can exhibit biases toward selecting certain options as a result of the ordering. We examine this phenomenon in the context of consumer response to the ordering of economics papers in an e-mail announcement issued by the NBER. We show that despite the effectively random list placement, papers listed first each week are about 30% more likely to be viewed, downloaded, and subsequently cited. We suggest that a model of “skimming” behavior, where individuals focus on the first few papers in the list due to time constraints, would be most consistent with our findings.

Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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Working Paper: It's Good to be First: Order Bias in Reading and Citing NBER Working Papers (2015)
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