Awards

2025 INFORMS BOM Section Best Working Paper Competition

The goal of this Competition is to highlight the best working papers in the area of Behavioral Operations.

The awards will be given annually at the INFORMS Annual meeting and will recognize papers as follows:

  • First prize (recognized with a virtual certificate, and a $500 prize)
  • Second prize (recognized with a virtual certificate)
  • 2 honorable mentions (recognized with a virtual certificate)

The award recipients will be invited to present their papers at a special session at the INFORMS Annual meeting.

Eligibility criteria and further details to be announced soon.

 

Previous Best Working Paper Award Winners

2024

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2024. 

  • First place: Green E-commerce: Environmental Impact of Fast Delivery - by Chenshan Hu, Xiaoyang Long, Jiankun Sun, Dennis Zhang. 
  • Second place: Delegated Innovation Scouting when Success is Rare: A Behavioral Investigation - by Mirko Kremer and Jochen Schlapp.
  • Honorable mentions:
    • Enhancing Volunteer Retention: The Role of Experienced Volunteer - by Vinit, Tipnis, Christopher Chen, Fei Gao.
    • Modeling the Influence of Unpaid Effort in Delivery Agents’ Choices in Last-Mile Platforms - by Lina Wang, Stanley Lim, Elliot Rabinovich.

2023

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2023. 

  • First place: Competition in Optimal Stopping: Behavioral Insights - by Ignacio Rios and Pramit Ghosh.
  • Second place: Improving Human-Algorithm Collaboration: Causes and Mitigation of Over- and Under-Adherence - by Maya Balakrishnan, Kris Ferreira and Jordan Tong. 
  • Honorable mentions:
    • Customers' Multihoming Behavior in Ride-hailing: Empirical Evidence Using a Structural Model - by Sandeep Chitla, Maxime Cohen, Srikanth Jagabathula and Dmitry Mitrofanov
    • Measuring Strategic Behavior by Gig Economy Workers: Multihoming and Repositioning - by Daniel Chen, Gad Allon and Ken Moon

2022

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2022. 

  • First place: Supplying Cash-Constrained Retailers: Understanding Shopkeeper Behavior at the Bottom of the Pyramid – by Sebastian Villa, Rafael Escamilla, and Jan Fransoo.
  • Second place: Under-Promising and Over-Delivering to Improve Patient Satisfaction at Emergency Departments: Evidence from a Field Experiment Providing Wait Information – by Sina Ansari, Debo Laurens, María Ibáñez, Seyed M.R. Iravani, and Sanjeev Malik.
  • Honorable mentions:
    • Disclosing Low Product Availability: An Online Retailer's Strategy for Mitigating Stockout Risk – by Dmitry Mitrofanov and Benjamin Knight.
    • Can Employees' Past Helping Behavior be Used to Improve Shift Scheduling? Evidence from ICU Nurses – by Zoey (Zhaohui) JIANG, John Silberholz, Yixin (Iris) Wang, Deena Kelly Costa, and Michael Sjoding.

2021

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2021:

  • First place: Learning Best Practices: Can Machine Learning Improve Human Decision-Making? – by Hamsa Bastani, Osbert Bastani, and Park Sinchaisri.
  • Second place: On Customer (Dis)honesty in Priority Queues: The Role of Lying Aversion – by Rouba Ibrahim, Arturo Estrada Rodriguez, Dongyuan Zhan.
  • Honorable mentions (we have three this year due to the record number of excellent submissions):
    • Wage Transparency, Negotiation, and Reference-dependent Utility – by Hengchen Dai, Xiaoyang Long, and Dennis Zhang.
    • To Earmark or Not to Earmark? The Role of Control, Transparency, Salience and Warm-Glow – by Özalp Özer, Gloria Urrea, and Sebastian Villa.
    • Delay Information in Virtual Queues: A Large-Scale Field Experiment on a Major Ride-Sharing Platform – by Qiuping Yu, Yiming Zhang, and Yong-Pin Zhou.

2020

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2020:

  • First place: The Gatekeeper's Dilemma: "When Should I Transfer This Customer?" by Evgeny Kagan, Brett Hathaway, & Maqbool Dada
  • Second place: To What Extent Do Workers’ Preferences Matter by Zhenzhen Jia, Kejia Hu, Jian-Qiang Hu, & Vishal Ahuja
  • Honorable mentions (we have three this year due to the record number of excellent submissions):
    • Off-Grid Lighting Business Models to Serve the Poor: Evidence From a Structural Model and Field Experiments in Rwanda by Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Serguei Netessine, Ioana Popescu, & Clarke Rowan
    • Silent Abandonment in Contact Centers: Estimating Customer Patience from Uncertain Data by Antonio Castellanos, Galit Yom-Tov, & Yair Goldberg
    • A capacity allocation auction for sales and operations planning - Eliciting truthful information by Frank Hage, Sebastian Schiffels, & Martin Grunow

2019

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2019:

  • First Place: Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety through Access to Human Contact Michelle Shell (Harvard University) & Ryan Buell (Harvard University)
  • Second Place: Multi-Period Inventory Management with Budget Cycles: Rational and Behavioral Decision Making Michael Becker-Peth (RSM Erasmus), Kai Hoberg (KLU Hamburg), & Margarita Protopappa-Sieke (McKinsey & Company)
  • Honorable Mention: The Impact of Behavioral and Economic Drivers on Gig Economy Workers Park Sinchaisri (University of Pennsylvania), Gad Allon (University of Pennsylvania), Maxime Cohen (NYU)

2018

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2018: 

  • First Place: Private Information and Endogenous Matching in Supply Chains Andrew Davis (Cornell University) & Kyle Hyndman (UT Dallas)
  • Second Place: Increased Transparency in Procurement: The Role of Peer Effects Ruth Beer (Indiana University), Ignacio Rios (Stanford University), & Daniela Saban (Standford University)
  • Honorable Mention:  From Noise to Bias in Linked Supply Chain Decisions Daniel Fuller (Dartmouth) & Jordan Tong (University of Wisconsin)

2017

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2017: 

  • First Place: Ruomeng Cui, Jun Li, and Dennis Zhang: Discrimination with Incomplete Information in the Shared Economy: Evidence from Field Experiments on Airbnb
  • Second Place: Bhavani Shanker Uppari and Sameer Hasija: Modeling Newsvendor Behavior: A Prospect Theory Approach
  • Honorable Mention:  Eric Park, Yichuan Ding, Mahesh Nagarajan, and Eric Grafstein: Patient Prioritization in Emergency Department Triage Systems: An Empirical Study of Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS)

2016

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2016:

  • First Place: A Behavioral Study on Abandonment Decisions in Multi-Stage Projects by Javad Nasiry (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Xiaoyang Long (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), and Yaozhong Wu (National University of Singapore)
  • Second Place: Impact of Queue Configuration on Service Time: Evidence from a Supermarket by Jingqi Wang (University of Hong Kong) and Yong-Pin Zhou (University of Washington, Seattle)
  • Honorable Mention:  Ideation-Execution Transition in Product Development by Evgeny Kagan (University of Michigan Ross School of Business), Stephen Leider (University of Michigan Ross School of Business) and William Lovejoy (University of Michigan Ross School of Business)

2015

The results were announced at the conclusion of a special presentation session at INFORMS 2015:

  • First Place: Bargaining Process and Channel Efficiency by Ernan Haruvy (University of Texas at Dallas), Elena Katok (University of Texas at Dallas), and Valery Pavlov (University of Auckland)
  • Second Place: Transparency and Indirect Reciprocity in Social Responsibility: An Incentivized Experiment by Tim Kraft (University of Virginia), Leon Valdes (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Yanchong Zheng (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Honorable Mention: Learning From the Best: The Effects of Public Relative Performance Feedback on Variability and Productivity by Hummy Song (Harvard University), Anita L. Tucker (Brandeis University), Karen L. Murrell (Kaiser Permanente), and David Vinson (Kaiser Permanente)

2014

Results were announced on Nov. 9, 2014 during the INFORMS BOM Best Working Paper Presentation session at INFORMS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Congratulations to all finalists. 

  • First Place: Designing Incentive Systems for Truthful Demand Information Sharing– Theory and Experiment by Lisa M. Scheele, Marco Slikker and Ulrich W. Thonemann
  • Second Place: Capacity Investment in Supply Chains: Contracts and the Hold-up Problem by Andrew Davis and Stephen Leider
  • Honorable Mention: Remanufacturing, Third-Party Competition, and Consumers' Perceived Value of New Products by Vishal Agrawal, Atalay Atasu and Koert van Ittersum

2013

Results were announced on Oct. 6, 2013, 2014 during the INFORMS BOM Best Working Paper Presentation session at INFORMS Annual Meeting.

  • First Place: Waiting Patiently: An Empirical Study of Queue Abandonment in an Emergency Department Robert Batt & Christian Terwiesch
  • Runner Up: Trust, Trustworthiness and Information Sharing in Supply Chains Bridging China and the U.S. Ozalp Ozer, Yufei Ren, & Yanchong Zheng
  • Honorable Mention: The Design of Experiential Services: Optimal Sequence and Duration of Service Activities Aparupa Das Gupta, Uday Karmarkar, & Guillaume Roels

Congratulations to all.