John A. List

Last updated
John A. List
ASSA 2025 - John List w Anna Stansbury.jpg
Born
John August List

(1968-09-25) September 25, 1968 (age 57)
Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
Spouse(s) Dana L. Suskind
(m. 2018)
Academic background
Education University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point (BA)
University of Wyoming (PhD)
Doctoral advisor Shelby Gerking
Influences Vernon Smith [1]
Gary Becker [1]

John August List (born September 25, 1968) is an American economist known for his work in establishing field experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis. Since 2016, he has served as the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he was Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2012 to 2018, and Director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics since 2025. [3] Since 2016, he has also served as Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. [4] In 2011, List was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2011, he was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society. [5] [6] In 2024, Omicron Delta Epsilon, the international honor society for economics, gave List the biennial John R. Commons Award. [7]

Contents

List is noted for his pioneering contributions to field experimentation in economics, with Nobel laureate economist George Akerlof and noted law professor Cass Sunstein writing that "List has done more than anyone else to advance the methods and practice of field experiments." [8] Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker quipped that "John List's work in field experiments is revolutionary." [9] In her Nobel Prize lecture, Esther Duflo noted that "Before us, economists like John List had shown how powerful field experiments could be for testing behavioral theories outside the lab." [10] Further, in the introduction of their Handbook of Field Experiments (2017), Duflo and Abhijeet Banerjee acknowledge List's role in bringing field experiments into mainstream economics when writing: "John List's early work in the field, such as his experiments in real markets, demonstrated the feasibility and insights of randomized interventions in natural environments well before they became widespread in development economics." [11]

As detailed in his popular science book, The Why Axis (co-authored with Uri Gneezy), List uses field experiments to offer new insights in various areas of economics research, such as education, private provision of public goods, discrimination, social preferences, prospect theory, environmental economics, marketplace effects on corporate and government policy decisions, gender and inclusion, corporate social responsibility and auctions. The book became an international best-seller and presented List's field experiments from the early 1990s until 2010.

List published a second popular book, The Voltage Effect, in February, 2022, that has become a runaway best seller, making the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Porchlight, Washington Post, and LA Times best seller lists. [9] The book is based on a collection of academic articles written by List on scaling. With a suite of coauthors, List has produced both theoretical and empirical insights concerning the "science of using science." [12] [13] [14] [15] In The Voltage Effect, List argues that scaling, at its roots, is an Anna Karenina problem, overturning the conventional wisdom that the problem is a "silver bullet" or "best shot" problem. This leads List to present a thesis that "Every scalable idea is the same, each unscalable idea is unscalable in its own way."

List received his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point and his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming in 1996. His first teaching position was at the University of Central Florida; he later moved to the University of Arizona and then to the University of Maryland, College Park (where he still holds an adjunct position), before moving to the University of Chicago. List also spends time at Tilburg University, where he is a distinguished visiting scholar, and at Resources for the Future, where he is a University Distinguished Scholar. From May 2002 to July 2003 he served on the Council of Economic Advisers as a senior economist. According to RePEc, List is the top ranked economist worldwide of the 40,000 economists who graduated in the last 20 years, and as of August 2025, RePEc ranks him as the 5th most influential economist in the world. [16]

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. [17] List became the first chief economist for the Walmart corporation in April 2022. [18]

Awards

In November 2014 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Tilburg University. [19] In 2015 he was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society. In 2015 [20] and 2016, [21] he was named to the Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50. In 2017, he received the Hartsook Growing Philanthropy Award. [22]

Work

List with Anna Stansbury at AEA 2025 in San Francisco ASSA 2025 - John List w Anna Stansbury.jpg
List with Anna Stansbury at AEA 2025 in San Francisco

His work focuses on microeconomic issues, and includes over 250 academic publications. [23]

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. [24] List's field experiments have found that gift exchange is not as powerful a motivator of labor effort as earlier research found, [25] that social preferences are not as pronounced as prior research found, [26] 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. [27]

List's recent work in behavioral economics has found that framing can induce increased worker productivity, [28] 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 [29] and on endangered species. [30] List's research has also focused on testing non-market valuation mechanisms in the field frequently used in contingent valuation [31] and in testing different incentives to promote environmentally friendly technology adoption. [32]

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 [33] the more people give. Also, matching grants [34] increase giving, but it doesn't matter if the match is 1:1 or 3:1. [35] 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 [36] and social pressure [37] 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. [38]

Some of his field experimental work on charitable fundraising were highlighted in The New York Times Magazine . [39] In a 2009 Crain's Chicago Business article, List is referred to as a "rock star" in the area of philanthropy. [40] 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. [41] He also serves as principal investigator for the Science of Philanthropy Initiative. [42]

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. [43] 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) [44] [45] and to test the impact of performance pay for teachers in Chicago Heights, IL. [46]

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. [45] The center was started by List together with world-renowned scholars at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, was awarded a $10M grant from the Griffin Foundation to launch the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center (CHECC), one of the most comprehensive longitudinal early childhood studies ever conducted. With nearly 1,500 child participants, CHECC aimed to identify programs and strategies for improving student education in America's schools and to try to understand how to best foster development during the early years of a child's life and to place children on a successful path. Test scores of children participating showing improvement, the 2011-2012 mid-year assessment scores revealed an impressive 16.75% percentile increase from 2010 fall assessment scores. Children entering the program often test below average (35.5-percentile), but by the mid-year assessment of the second year, the majority of children are scoring at average (50-percentile), priming them for kindergarten and further educational attainment. [45]

As part of the CHECC Professor List and his team also established a Parent Academy, a program that paid parents a stipend of up to $7,000 per year to attend bi-weekly workshops with their children and learn about parenting strategies. [45] Findings from their randomized evaluation reveal that incentives to parents lead to large gains in achievement and that preschool programs may result in sustained positive impacts on achievement. They continue to track progress and results for graduated students.

List co-founded and co-directs the Thirty Million Words Center for Early Learning and Public Health along with Dana L. Suskind. [47]

Other research

List has studied the economics of discrimination, finding that discrimination in marketplaces is statistical discrimination, rarely motivated by animus. [48] 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. [49] 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. [50] List has also used experiments to test ideas in finance. He has tested the options model, [51] information cascades, [52] and the equity premium puzzle [53] 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 surgeon Dana L. Suskind in 2018. [54] They live in Hyde Park, Chicago, and have a blended family of eight children. [55]

Academic publications

References

  1. 1 2 "Interview John A. List" (PDF). www.richmondfed.org.
  2. ↑ "John List - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu.
  3. ↑ "John A. List - Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor - Curriculum vitae" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-01-09.
  4. ↑ "John A. List named Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy". Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  5. ↑ "Current Fellows". www.econometricsociety.org. Retrieved 2024-06-14.
  6. ↑ "American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects nine UChicago scholars". April 20, 2011.
  7. ↑ "Omicron Delta Epsilon - the International Economics Honor Society".
  8. ↑ Akerlof, George; Oliver, Adam; Sunstein, Cass (2021). "Editorial Introduction: Field experiments and public policy". Behavioural Public Policy. 5 (1): 1. doi: 10.1017/bpp.2020.16 . S2CID   229355469.
  9. 1 2 List, John A. (2022). Voltage Effect – Home Page. Crown. ISBN   978-0593239483.
  10. ↑ "Duflo Lecture".
  11. ↑ "Banerjee and Duflo, Handbook".
  12. ↑ Ammerman, Robert; Duggan, Anne; List, John; Supplee, Lauren; Suskind, Dana (January 17, 2021). "The role of open science practices in scaling evidence-based prevention programs". Prevention Science. 23 (5): 799–808. doi:10.1007/s11121-021-01322-8. PMC   9283157 . PMID   34780008 – via ideas.repec.org.
  13. ↑ Gupta, Snigdha; Kane, Maggie; List, John; Sablich, Liz; Supplee, Lauren; Suskind, Dana (January 17, 2021). "Recommendations for Mitigating Threats to Scaling". Artefactual Field Experiments– via ideas.repec.org.
  14. ↑ Al-Ubaydli, Omar; List, John; Suskind, Dana (January 17, 2019). "The science of using science: Towards an understanding of the threats to scaling experiments". Artefactual Field Experiments– via ideas.repec.org.
  15. ↑ Al-Ubaydli, Omar; List, John; LoRe, Danielle; Suskind, Dana (January 17, 2017). "Scaling for economists: lessons from the non-adherence problem in the medical literature". Artefactual Field Experiments– via ideas.repec.org.
  16. ↑ "Economist Rankings | IDEAS/RePEc". ideas.repec.org. Archived from the original on 2023-01-14.
  17. ↑ Edmonds, David (24 October 2020). "The man who taught Uber how to say sorry". BBC.
  18. ↑ Gatling, Paul (10 May 2022). "Walmart hires 1st chief economist". Talk Business & Politics News.
  19. ↑ "John A. List | The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy". harris.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2021-12-21.
  20. ↑ "2015 Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50" (PDF). Nonprofit Times. July 2015. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  21. ↑ "2016 Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50" (PDF). Nonprofit Times. August 2016. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  22. ↑ "Prof. John List Receives Hartsook Growing Philanthropy Award | Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics | The University of Chicago". economics.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2021-12-21.
  23. ↑ "John List – Home Page" (PDF).
  24. ↑ Levitt, Steven D.; List, John A. (2007). "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal about the Real World?" (PDF). The Journal of Economic Perspectives. 21 (2): 153–174. doi:10.1257/jep.21.2.153. JSTOR   30033722. S2CID   26940779.
  25. ↑ Gneezy, Uri; List, John A. (2006). "Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments" (PDF). Econometrica. 74 (5): 1365–1384. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00707.x. JSTOR   3805928.
  26. ↑ List, John A. (2006). "The Behavioralist Meets the Market: Measuring Social Preferences and Reputation Effects in Actual Transactions". Journal of Political Economy. 114 (1): 1–37. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.599.9754 . doi:10.1086/498587. JSTOR   10.1086/498587. S2CID   5759503.
  27. ↑ List, J. A. (1 February 2003). "Does Market Experience Eliminate Market Anomalies?" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 118 (1): 41–71. doi:10.1162/00335530360535144. ISSN   0033-5533.
  28. ↑ "New Economists worth knowing". 4 November 2010. Archived from the original on 2 November 2011. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
  29. ↑ List, John A.; Millimet, Daniel L.; Fredriksson, Per G.; McHone, W. Warren (1 November 2003). "Effects of Environmental Regulations on Manufacturing Plant Births: Evidence from a Propensity Score Matching Estimator" (PDF). The Review of Economics and Statistics. 85 (4): 944–952. doi:10.1162/003465303772815844. ISSN   0034-6535. S2CID   57562904.
  30. ↑ "Is the Endangered Species Act bad for endangered species? John List thinks it might be. - Freakonomics". 6 January 2007.
  31. ↑ List, John A. (2001). "Do Explicit Warnings Eliminate the Hypothetical Bias in Elicitation Procedures? Evidence from Field Auctions for Sportscards" (PDF). The American Economic Review. 91 (5): 1498–1507. doi:10.1257/aer.91.5.1498. JSTOR   2677935.
  32. ↑ http://home.uchicago.edu/~dherberich/HerberichListPrice_CFL.pdf%5B%5D
  33. ↑ List, John A.; Lucking-Reiley, David (1 February 2002). "The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign". Journal of Political Economy. 110 (1): 215–233. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.399.3430 . doi:10.1086/324392. ISSN   0022-3808. S2CID   2606544.
  34. ↑ Karlan, Dean; List, John A. (June 2006). "Does Price Matter in Charitable Giving? Evidence From a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment". NBER Working Paper No. 12338. Cambridge, MA. doi: 10.3386/w12338 .
  35. ↑ Hall, Holly. "Bigger Matching Gifts Don't Produce More Donors" (PDF). University of Chicago.
  36. ↑ Landry, Craig; Lange, Andreas; List, John A.; Price, Michael K.; Rupp, Nicholas G. (September 2005). "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Charity: Evidence from a Field Experiment". NBER Working Paper No. 11611. Cambridge, MA. doi: 10.3386/w11611 .
  37. ↑ DellaVigna, S.; List, J. A.; Malmendier, U. (1 February 2012). "Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 127 (1): 1–56. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.153.2431 . doi:10.1093/qje/qjr050. ISSN   0033-5533. PMID   22448394. S2CID   8389271.
  38. ↑ "Want people to donate more? Remind them how good it feels to give | University of Chicago News". news.uchicago.edu. 11 December 2019. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  39. ↑ Leonhardt, David (March 9, 2008). "What Makes People Give?". The New York Times .
  40. ↑ Le Beau, Christina (2009-08-22). "Cracking the fundraising code". Crain's Chicago Business . Retrieved 2018-05-25.
  41. ↑ Roll, Abby (15 February 2019). "Dr. John List, the science of the economics of philanthropy, and the partnership of two thought leaders". Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  42. ↑ "Science of Philanthropy Initiative". spihub.org. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  43. ↑ Staley, Oliver (February 23, 2011). "Chicago Economist's 'Crazy Idea' Wins Ken Griffin's Backing" . Bloomberg.com.
  44. ↑ "Welcome griffincenter.org - BlueHost.com". www.griffincenter.org.
  45. 1 2 3 4 "CHECC | John List". voices.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-04.
  46. ↑ "Anne and Kenneth Griffin Provide $10 Million for Multi-Year Study on School Improvement". October 8, 2009.
  47. ↑ "Leadership". TMW. Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  48. ↑ List, John A. (2004). "The Nature and Extent of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Evidence from the Field" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 119 (1): 49–89. doi:10.1162/003355304772839524. JSTOR   25098677.
  49. ↑ Dye, Lee (19 January 2011). "Why Do Women Shy From Competitive Jobs?". ABC News.
  50. ↑ Gneezy, Uri; Leonard, Kenneth L.; List, John A. (January 2008). "Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society". NBER Working Paper No. 13727. Cambridge, MA. doi: 10.3386/w13727 .
  51. ↑ List, John A.; Haigh, Michael S. (2010). "Investment under Uncertainty: Testing the Options Model with Professional Traders". Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research. doi: 10.3386/w16038 .{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  52. ↑ Alevy, Jonathan E.; Haigh, Michael S.; List, John A. (2007). "Information Cascades: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Financial Market Professionals" (PDF). The Journal of Finance. 62 (1): 151–180. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01204.x. JSTOR   4123459.
  53. ↑ Haigh, Michael S.; List, John A. (1 February 2005). "Do Professional Traders Exhibit Myopic Loss Aversion? An Experimental Analysis". The Journal of Finance. 60 (1): 523–534. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.202.502 . doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00737.x. ISSN   1540-6261.
  54. ↑ "From 'Thirty Million Words' to Just Two: I Do". www.chicagomaroon.com. Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  55. ↑ Bianchi, Laura (1 April 2019). "John List Talks to Crain's for The Takeaway | University of Chicago Law School". www.law.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 11 November 2025.
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