John J. Horton

Contact Information

address: 443 Birch Street, Redwood City, CA 94062
phone: (617) 595-2437
website: john-joseph-horton.com
email: john.joseph.horton@gmail.com
twitter: @johnjhorton
google scholar profile: http://goo.gl/buQYm

Graduate Studies

Ph.D. Public Policy, Harvard University, 2011
Thesis: "Online Labor Markets"
Committee: Richard Zeckhauser (chair), Lawrence Katz and Jeffrey Liebman

Undergraduate Studies

B.S. Mathematics, Computer Science (minor), United States Military Academy at West Point, 2001

Teaching & Research Fields

Research fields: Labor Economics, Organizational Economics, Personnel Economics
Teaching fields: Econometrics, Public Economics, Decision Analysis

Teaching Experience

  1. Tutorial Leader, Harvard College, EC970: Online Work, Spring 2010
  2. Teaching Fellow for Prof. Richard Zeckhauser, Harvard Kennedy School, API-302: Analytic Frameworks for Public Policy, Fall 2007 - 2010
  3. Teaching Fellow for Prof. Jeffrey Liebman, Harvard Kennedy School, API-102, Economic Analysis of Public Policy, Spring 2008
  4. Instructor, Harvard Kennedy School, Math Camp for incoming PhD/DBA candidates, Fall 2008
  5. Instructor, United States Military Academy at West Point, MA206: Probability and Statistics, Summer 2008

Research Experience & Employment

  1. Staff Economist, oDesk Corporation, 2011 - Present
  2. Research Associate, Harvard Kennedy School, 2012 - Present
  3. Research Intern, London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance, Summer 2010
  4. Resident Tutor, Pforzheimer House, Harvard College, 2007 - 2011
  5. Tank Platoon Leader & Executive Officer, US Army, 2001 - 2006

Academic Affiliations

  1. Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, 2012 - Present
  2. Research Associate, Harvard Kennedy School, 2012 - Present
  3. Institute for Quantitative Social Science, 2009 - 2011

Honors, Scholarships & Fellowships

  1. Invited Participant, Dagstuhl Seminar "Cloud-based Software Crowdsourcing", Leibniz Center for Informatics
  2. Becker Center on Price Theory, Summer Camp, University of Chicago, 2010
  3. NSF-IGERT Multidisciplinary Fellowship in Inequality and Social Policy, 2008 - 2010
  4. Institute for Humane Studies Graduate Fellowship, 2009
  5. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Honorable Mention, 2008
  6. Outstanding Winner, Mathematical Contest in Modeling and SIAM Prize Winner (with J. Gibbs and K. Arnett), 2000

Grants

  1. Lab for Economic Applications and Policy, Harvard University, Research Grant, 2010
  2. Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Travel Grant, 2010
  3. Amazon Research Grant, Web Services, 2010
  4. Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, Research Grant, 2009

Job Market Paper

  1. "Computer-mediated Matchmaking: Facilitating Employer Search and Screening," 2012. Status: Draft available.

Working Papers

  1. "Employer Expectations, Peer Effects and Productivity: Evidence from a Series of Field Experiments," 2010. Status: Draft available.
  2. "The Wages of Pay Cuts: Evidence from a Field Experiment" (with Daniel Chen), 2012. Status: Draft available.
  3. "Procurement, Incentives and Bargaining Friction: Evidence from Government Contracts," 2009. Status: R&R at The Journal of Law & Economics

Publications in Economics Journals

  1. "The Online Laboratory: Conducting Experiments in a Real Labor Market" (with David Rand and Richard Zeckhauser) Experimental Economics, 14:3 (2011), 399-425.
  2. "The Condition of the Turking Class: Are Online Employers Fair and Honest?" Economics Letters, 111:1 (April 2011), 10-12.

Publications in Computer Science Journals / Published Proceedings

  1. "The Future of Crowd Work" (with Aniket Kittur, Jeffrey V. Nickerson, Michael S. Bernstein, Elizabeth M. Gerber, Aaron Shaw, John Zimmerman and Matthew Lease), Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ACM-CSCW), February 2013.
  2. "Labor Allocation in Paid Crowdsourcing: Experimental Evidence on Positioning, Nudges and Prices" (with Dana Chandler), Proceedings of the 25th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Human Computation Workshop (HCOMP), August 2011.
  3. "Designing Incentives for Inexpert Human Raters" (with Aaron Shaw and Daniel Chen), Proceedings of the ACM Conference of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ACM-CSCW), Best Paper Nominee, March 2011.
  4. "Online Labor Markets," Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE), December 2010
  5. "Algorithmic Wage Negotiations: Applications to Paid Crowdsourcing" (with Richard Zeckhauser), Proceedings of CrowdConf, 2010
  6. "Task Search in a Human Computation Market" (with Lydia Chilton, Rob Miller and Shiri Azenkot), Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining/Human Computation (ACM-KDD/HCOMP), 2010.
  7. "The Labor Economics of Paid Crowdsourcing" (with Lydia Chilton), Proceedings of the 11th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (ACM-EC), 2010.

Resting Papers

  1. "The Dot Guessing Game: A Fruit Fly For Human Computation," 2010. Status: Draft available.

Non-refereed Publications

  1. "The Need for Standardization in Crowdsourcing" (with Panagiotis Ipeirotis), presented at the Crowdsourcing Workshop, ACM-CHI 2011 (Vancouver, BC), May 2011.
  2. "Heads in the Cloud: Challenges and Opportunities in Human Computation" (with Robert C. Miller, Greg Little, Michael Bernstein, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Lydia B. Chilton, Max Goldman and Rajeev Nayak), XRDS: Crossroads, the ACM Magazine for Students, December 2010.

Research Papers in Progress

  1. "Overcoming Congestion in a Matching Market by Making Applications Costly" (with R. Johari and D. Chandler).
  2. "Virtual Migration: the Effect of Outsourcing through Online Platforms on Workers in Developing Countries" (with D. Pomeranz).
  3. "Digitization of Information and the Market for Contract Labor" (with A. Agrawal, N. Lacetera and E. Lyons). To appear in the NBER Economics of Digitization volume.
  4. "Helping Workers Make Human Capital Decisions via Algorithmic Recommendations" (with P. Coles).

Select Invited Academic Presentations & Panels

  1. Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) Annual Meeting, "Computer-Mediated Matchmaking: Facilitating Employer Search an Screening," May 2013
  2. MIT Roundtable Discussion on Work and Value in the Digital Economy, December 2012
  3. The Bernard L. Schwartz Globalization Initiative at SAIS Distinguished Lecture Series, "Technological Disruption in Educationa and Labor Markets," Johns Hopkins University, November 2012
  4. Networked Business Seminar, "The Applied Economics of an Online Labor Market: The Case of oDesk," Harvard Business School, November 2011
  5. Experimental Economics Lunch Seminar, University of Chicago, April 2011
  6. Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 24th Annual Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, Invited Speaker on "Social Science and the Wisdom of Crowds," December 2010
  7. The 6th Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE 2010), Stanford University, December 2010
  8. Christakis Lab Group Seminar Series, Harvard Medical School, November 2010
  9. CrowdConf 2010, San Francisco, CA, October 2010
  10. Advances with Field Experiments, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, October 2010
  11. Crowdsourcing Applications Seminar, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, October 2010
  12. European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) / Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) 3rd International Conference, University College London, June 2010
  13. ACM-Conference on Electronic Commerce (ACM-EC), Cambridge, MA, June 2010
  14. EconCS Seminar, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science, March 2010
  15. SJDM Annual Conference, Boston, MA, November 2009

Select Invited Industry Presentations & Panels

  1. BPO/ITO World Forum, Invited Panelist "The Social and Economic Impact of Global Sourcing: Getting the Complete Picture," New York City, June 2012
  2. Founders and Funders Event, "Winning the Talent War," Redwood City, March 2012
  3. Intuit, Big Data and Analytics Workshop, Mountain View, December 2011
  4. Cyberposium 17, Harvard Business School, Panel "The Cloud and SMB," November 2011
  5. Institute for the Future, Expert Panel:"Future of Work," Palo Alto, November 2011
  6. Academy of Management Symposium: "The Global Ecology of Crowdsourcing," San Antonio, August, 2011

Media Appearances

  1. On Point with Tom Ashbrook, "The Rise of Micro-Labor," NPR 90.9 WBUR Boston, April 2012

Professional Service

Reviewer for:

  1. The Quarterly Journal of Economics
  2. Judgement & Decision Making
  3. Clinical Psychological Science
  4. ACM-Electronic Commerce
  5. ACM-Computer Human Interaction

Program Committee for:

  1. NIPS Workshop on Computation Social Science and the Wisdom of Crowds, 2011
  2. Program Committee for ACM-Electronic Commerce, 2012 - 2013

Military Awards & Decorations

Combat Action Badge, Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Basic Parachutist Badge, National Defense Service Medal, Presidential Unit Citation