Daniel H. Simon

Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial

Objective To measure the effect of free access to the scientific literature on article downloads and citations. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting 11 journals published by the American Physiological Society. Participants 1619 research articles and reviews. Main outcome measures Article readership (measured as downloads of full text, PDFs, and abstracts) and number of unique visitors (internet protocol addresses). Citations to articles were gathered from the Institute for Scientific Information after one year. Interventions Random assignment on online publication of articles published in 11 scientific journals to open access (treatment) or subscription access (control). Results Articles assigned to open access were associated with 89% more full text downloads (95% confidence interval 76% to 103%), 42% more PDF downloads (32% to 52%), and 23% more unique visitors (16% to 30%), but 24% fewer abstract downloads (−29% to −19%) than subscription access articles in the first six months after publication. Open access articles were no more likely to be cited than subscription access articles in the first year after publication. Fifty nine per cent of open access articles (146 of 247) were cited nine to 12 months after publication compared with 63% (859 of 1372) of subscription access articles. Logistic and negative binomial regression analysis of article citation counts confirmed no citation advantage for open access articles. Conclusions Open access publishing may reach more readers than subscription access publishing. No evidence was found of a citation advantage for open access articles in the first year after publication. The citation advantage from open access reported widely in the literature may be an artefact of other causes.

Hitting the Jackpot or Hitting the Skids: Entertainment, Poverty, and the Demand for State Lotteries

State-sponsored lotteries are a lucrative source of revenue. Despite their low payout rates, lotteries are extremely popular, particularly among low-income citizens. State officials laud the benefits of lottery proceeds and promote the fun and excitement of participation. This entertainment value is one explanation for lottery demand by the poor: individuals with lower incomes substitute lottery play for other entertainment. Alternatively, low-income consumers may view lotteries as a convenient and otherwise rare opportunity for radically improving their standard of living. Bad times may cause desperation, and the desperate may turn to lotteries in an effort to escape hardship. This study tests these competing explanations. We examine lottery sales data from 39 states over 10 years and find a strong and positive relationship between sales and poverty rates. In contrast, we find no relationship between movie ticket sales, another inexpensive form of entertainment, and poverty rates.

The effect of a magazine’s free digital content on its print circulation: Cannibalization or complementarity?

We examine how offering digital content affects demand for print magazines. Using a searchable website archive, we measure the digital content offered by a sample of US consumer magazines from 1996-2001. We find strong evidence that digital content cannibalizes print sales. On average, a magazines print circulation declines about three percent when it offers a website. However, the effect varies with the type of digital content offered. Offering digital access to the entire contents of the current print magazine reduces print sales by about nine percent. We find no evidence that digital content complements print magazines. These results are robust to including controls for unobserved magazine, category, and time effects, as well as controls for the impact of contemporaneous price changes and other factors.

Driving fatalities after 9/11: a hidden cost of terrorism

We show that the publics response to terrorist threats can have unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity. Driving fatalities increased significantly after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, events that prompted many travellers to substitute road transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions and other factors, we find that travellers’ response to 9/11 resulted in 327 driving deaths per month in late 2001. Moreover, while the effect of 9/11 weakened over time, as many as 2300 driving deaths may be attributable to the attacks.

Internal and external influences on adoption decisions in multi-unit firms: the moderating effect of experience

Facing uncertainty about whether to adopt a new technology, firms rely on both external and internal sources of information. Firms may learn vicariously about the desirability of adoption; a large body of research has demonstrated a tendency for firms to imitate rival adopters. Organizations with multiple units may also learn from their own experience once an initial unit of the firm has adopted. This article uses data on the establishment of websites by consumer magazines during the early internet era to test the hypothesis that multi-unit firms pay less attention to rivals after an initial unit of the firm has adopted. Consistent with this hypothesis, it is found that the influence of rivals drops sharply following the initial adoption. One explanation for the shift is that vicarious learning becomes less valuable once richer information becomes available from internal sources.

Do Incumbents Improve Service Quality in Response to Entry? Evidence from Airlines' On-Time Performance

We examine if and how incumbent firms respond to entry and entry threats using nonprice modes of competition. Our analysis focuses on airline service quality. We find that incumbent on-time performance OTP actually worsens in response to entry, and even entry threats, by Southwest Airlines. Since Southwest is both a top-performing airline in OTP and a low-cost carrier LCC, we conjecture that this response by incumbents may be due to a cost-cutting strategy that allows for intense postentry price competition along with preentry deterrence, or it may be due to a postentry differentiation strategy along with preentry accommodation. Further analysis of entry and entry threats by other airlines is inconclusive, providing evidence that is partially consistent with both hypotheses. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of worsening OTP can only be observed when the potential entrant is a LCC Southwest, Jet Blue, and AirTran. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1918 . This paper was accepted by by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

Gender Bias in Power Relationships: Evidence from Police Traffic Stops

We test for the existence of gender bias in power relationships. Specifically, we examine whether police officers are less likely to issue traffic tickets to men or to women during traffic stops. Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to receive tickets, our analysis shows otherwise. Examination of a pooled sample of traffic stops from five locations reveals no gender bias, but does show significant regional variation in the likelihood of citations. Analysis by location shows that women are more likely to receive citations in three of the five locations. Men are more likely to receive citations in the other two locations. To our knowledge, this study is the first to test for gender bias in traffic stops, and clearly refutes the conventional wisdom that police are more lenient towards women.

Is Dual Agency in Real Estate a Cause for Concern

We examine the effects of the regulation of dual agency in residential real estate transactions, for 10,888 transactions in Long Island, New York in 2004–2007. We find that dual agency has an overall null effect on sale price, but includes two opposing forces where buyer and seller interests might be compromised. The link between dual agency and timing of sales is less clear. These findings are robust to endogeneity bias. Although it appears dual agency does cause some market distortions, our analysis yields little evidence that prohibiting dual agency in real estate will increase welfare.

The Impact of Mergers on Quality Provision: Evidence from the Airline Industry

We examine how mergers affect quality provision by analyzing five U.S. airline mergers, focusing on on-time performance (OTP). We find that airline mergers have minimal negative impacts on OTP, and likely result in long-run improvements due to efficiencies. Importantly, we show that this finding is not driven by post-merger changes in price that could affect on-time performance. Consequently, policymakers should not, as a rule, fear the negative quality effects of mergers, and may want to consider potential positive impacts on non-price dimensions, in addition to impacts on price, when assessing a proposed merger.

The Impact of 9/11 on Road Fatalities: The Other Lives Lost to Terrorism

We find that driving fatalities increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event which prompted many travelers to substitute less-safe surface transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions, and other factors, we attribute an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month to additional road travel undertaken in response to 9/11. In total, our results suggest that at least 1,200 additional driving deaths are attributable to the effect of 9/11. We also provide evidence that is consistent with the 9/11 effect on road fatalities weakening over time as drivers return to flying. Our results show that the public response to terrorist threats can create unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity.