Researchers involved in the MIT Bitcoin Project have found that students prefer cash and credit cards as their primary forms of payment, writes Deirdre Fernandes for The Boston Globe. While Bitcoin hasn’t caught on, the project has allowed researchers to collect data on how consumers adopt and use new technology, and to examine the technology underlying Bitcoin.
Jericka Duncan of CBS Evening News speaks with Prof. Antoinette Schoar about her research investigating how credit card companies target consumers based, in part, on their level of education. “Customers who are more educated and financially more sophisticated receive very different credit terms,” she explains.
Prof. Antoinette Schoar writes for The Wall Street Journal about her research examining how credit card companies are using customer data to target specific consumers. Schoar writes that “as more and more personal data becomes available, businesses are now able to target customers in a personalized and sophisticated way.”
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes that a study by Prof. Alberto Cavallo finds that prices for online and in-store items were identical about 72 percent of the time. Cavallo found that “prices were more likely to be the same for clothing and electronics, while drug stores and office supply stores showed greater price variations.”
CNBC’s John Schoen writes that MIT researchers have identified a group of consumers that repeatedly buy unpopular products. "You might have thought this was a category-specific effect — someone who buys the wrong makeup," explains Prof. Catherine Tucker. "But the strongest effects were going across category.”
Rob Britton writes for The Huffington Post about a new paper by Professor Bill Swelbar on the high subsidies provided to several Gulf airlines by their governments: Swelbar argues that “massive subsidies provided to Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, are harming airline service to and from small and medium-sized communities.”