Professor Daniel Read, BA, MA, PhD

Personal web pages

Professor of Behavioural Economics
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 45454
Fax: +44 (0) 191 33 45201
Room number: 522 Mill Hill Lane

(email at daniel.read2@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

Daniel Read received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Toronto in 1991. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, and held positions at University of Illinois: Urbana Champaign, University of Leeds, and London School of Economics. He is currently Professor of Behavioral Economics at Durham University Business School.

Most of his research is on judgment and decision making. He has studied variety seeking (how consumers choose to diversify consumption), intertemporal choice (how people trade off current and future consumption), and decision making under risk. He has written many papers on theoretical issues in decision making.

Current work includes a formal model of intertemporal choice, and a study of the causes of and solutions to cost overruns in major projects. In addition to his academic work, he has been a consultant for many UK government bodies, including the Financial Services Authority and the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Recently he was on the steering committee for the Social Market Foundation’s report Creatures of Habit: The Art of Behavioral Change.

His work has appeared in (amongst other places) Management Science, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Risk Analysis, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Experimental Economics. He has also written several book chapters, edited special issues of journals, and is co-editor of Journal of Economic Psychology, and associate editor for Management Science.

Research Groups

Research Interests

  • Behavioral economics, especially in the domain of intertemporal choice

Selected Publications

Books: edited

  • Loewenstein, G., Read, D. & Baumeister, R.F. 2003. Time and decision: Economic and psychological perspectives. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Journal papers: academic

  • Cubitt, R. & Read, D. 2007. Can intertemporal choice experiments elicit time preferences for consumption? Experimental Economics 10: 369-389.
  • Read, D. 2007. Time and the marketplace. Marketing Theory 7: 59-74.
  • Read, D. 2007. Utility theory from Jeremy Bentham to Daniel Kahneman. Thinking and Reasoning 13: 45-61.
  • Scholten, M. & Read, D. 2006. Discounting by intervals: a generalized model of intertemporal choice. Management Science 52(9): 1424-1436. (View publication online)
  • Soman, D., Ainslie, G., Frederick, S., Li, X., Lynch, J., Moreau, P., Mitchell, A., Read, D., Sawyer, A., Trope, Y., Wertenbroch, K. & Zauberman, G. 2006. The Psychology of intertemporal discounting: Why are distant events valued differently from proximal ones? Marketing Letters 16: 347-360.
  • Read, D. 2006. Which side are you on? The Ethics of Self-Command. Journal of Economic Psychology 27: 681-693.
  • Read, D., Frederick, S., Orsel, B. & Rahaman, J. 2005. Four score and seven years from now: the date/delay effect in temporal discounting. Management Science 51(9): 1326-1335. (View publication online)
  • Read, D. 2005. Monetary incentives: What are they good for? Journal of Economic Methodology 12: 265-276.
  • Summers, B., Williamson, T. & Read, D. 2004. Does method of acquisition affect the quality of expert judgment? A comparison of formal training with on-the-job learning. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 77: 237-258.
  • Read, D. & Read, N.L. 2004. Time discounting over the lifespan. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 94(1): 22-32. (View publication online)
  • Read, D. & Roelofsma, P.H.M.P. 2003. Subadditive versus hyperbolic discounting: A comparison of choice and matching. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 91(2): 140-153. (View publication online)
  • Brown, N., Read, D. & Summers, B. 2003. The lure of choice. Journal of Behavioural Decision Making 16: 297-308.
  • Read, D. & Powell, M. 2002. Reasons for sequence preferences. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 15: 433-460.
  • Read, D. & Read, N.L. 2001. An age-embedding effect: Time sensitivity and time insensitivity when pricing health benefits. Acta Psychologica 108: 117-136.
  • Read, D. 2001. Intrapersonal Dilemmas. Human Relations 54: 1093-1117.
  • Read, D. 2001. Is time-discounting hyperbolic or subadditive? Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 23: 5-32.
  • Read, D., Antonides, G., Van den Ouden, L. & Trienekens, H. 2001. Which is better: Simultaneous or sequential choice? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Show all publications

Supervises