James A. Dearden

James Dearden is a specialist in game theory. His most recent research interests include economic incentives and contracts, pricing and consumer search, firm disclosure of product quality, product return policies, and the economics of college rankings and admissions. 

Professor Dearden has published papers on these topics in journals including American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Marketing Research, International Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Production and Operations Management, and Economic Theory. He teaches microeconomics, game theory, and the theory of industrial organization. Professor Dearden began his academic career in 1987 at American University and has been a visiting fellow at the Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, Netherlands.

Education

• Muhlenberg College, A.B.
• Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D.

Research Interests

• Methodologies used by university rankings publications 
• Simultaneous search and signaling

• Luna Zhang, James Dearden, and Oliver Yao, “Should They Stay or Should They Go? Retailer Pricing to Retain or Release Customers Following Stockouts” Production and Operations Management 31, November 2022, 4173-4190.
• "Shuffling as a Sales Tactic: An Experimental Study of Selling Expert Advice" (with Qichao Shi, James A. Dearden, and Ernest K. Lai), February 11, 2021
• “Provider responses to a global budgeting system: The case of drug expenditures in Taiwan hospitals” (with Shin-Yi Chou, Mary Beth Deily, and Hsien-Ming Lien) Health Economics, October 2020, 1270-1278.
• "Strategic Manipulation of University Rankings, the Prestige Effect, and Student University Choice" (with Raj Grewal and Gary Lilien), Journal of Marketing Research 2019, August 2019, 691-707. 
• "Demonstrated interest: Signaling behavior in college admissions" (with Suhui Li, Chad Meyerhoefer, and Muzhe Yang) Contemporary Economic Policy (2017)
• "The University Rankings Game: Modeling Competition among Universities for Ranking," (with Raj Grewal and Gary Lilien), The American Statistician 62, August 2008, 232-237.*
  ^{*Technical Appendix to The University Rankings Game}
• "To Innovate or Not to Innovate: Incentives in Hierarchies," (with Barry Ickes and Larry Samuelson), American Economic Review 80, 1990, 1105-1124.
• "Efficiency and Exclusion in Collective Action Allocations," Mathematical Social Sciences 34, 1997, 153-174.
• "Serial Cost Sharing: General Cost Functions," Economic Theory 12, 1998, 189-198.
• "Capacity Cycles in Non-Differentiated Product, Oligopolistic Markets, " (with Gary Lilien and Eunsgang Yoon), International Journal of Research in Marketing, 16, 1999, 57-74.
• "Advertising Coopetition: Who Pays? Who Gains?" in M. Baye and J. Nelson (with Gary Lilien), Advertising and Differentiated Products, JAI Press, 2001.
• "Contracting, Gatekeepers, and Unverifiable Performance" (with Dorothy Klotz), RAND Journal of Economics, 33, Winter 2002, 723-740.