Dear colleagues,
We are delighted to announce the four finalists for the 2026 INFORMS TIMES Best Working Paper Award.
This year, we received more than 100 submissions, one of the highest submission counts in the competition's history. In the first round, 94 judges from the TIMES community, selected for their methodological expertise across analytical, empirical, and experimental research, rated each paper on a 1-to-5 scale along four dimensions: relevance, novelty, rigor, and impact. Each paper was assigned to three judges, with assignments made so that no judge reviewed a paper with which they had a conflict of interest. The six papers with the highest average ratings advanced to the final round.
For the final round, we were fortunate to have a panel of senior leaders in the TIMES community with no conflicts of interest with the shortlisted papers (in random order): Karthik Ramachandran (Georgia Tech), Guillaume Roels (INSEAD), Moren Levesque (York University), Vish Krishnan (University of California, San Diego), and Yan Huang (University of Michigan). They reviewed and ranked all six shortlisted papers, and their rankings were combined to determine the winner, runner-up, and two additional finalists.
The four papers selected for recognition are (in random order):
Freelancers or Employees? A Field Experiment with a Food Delivery Platform
Wee Kiat Lee (Nanyang Technological University), Yao Cui (Cornell University), Qi Li (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)
Measuring Strategic Behavior by Gig Economy Workers: Multihoming and Repositioning
Gad Allon (University of Pennsylvania), Daniel Chen (Boston College), Ken Moon (Cornell University)
On the Fragility of AI Agent Collusion
Jussi Keppo (National University of Singapore), Yuze Li (Boston University), Gerry Tsoukalas (Boston University), Nuo Yuan (Boston University)
The Role of Contextual Information in Customer Reviews: A Field Experiment on a Mental Health Platform
Guang Cheng (National University of Singapore), Sidika Tunc Candogan (National University of Singapore), Joel Goh (National University of Singapore), Bilal Gokpinar (University College London)
The winner and runner-up will be announced at the TIMES Business Meeting at INFORMS 2026. We are also deeply grateful to all of the first-round judges who generously contributed their time and expertise to the competition. They will also be recognized at the TIMES Business Meeting. We hope to see you there.
Warm regards,
Kostas Stouras (University College Dublin)
https://people.ucd.ie/konstantinos.stouras
Ran Zhuo (University of Michigan)
https://michiganross.umich.edu/faculty-research/faculty/ran-zhuo
Co-Chairs, 2026 INFORMS TIMES Best Working Paper Award Committee
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Ran Zhuo
Assistant Professor
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI
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