IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v115y2025i4p1059-99.html

Presidential Address: The Economist as Designer in the Innovation Process for Socially Impactful Digital Products

Author

Listed:
  • Susan Athey

Abstract

This paper provides an economic perspective on data-driven innovation in digital products, focusing on the role of complex experiments in measuring and improving social impact. The discussion highlights how tools and insights from economics contribute to each stage of the innovation process. Key contributions include identifying problems, developing theoretical frameworks, translating goals into measurable outcomes, analyzing historical data, and estimating counterfactual outcomes. The paper also surveys recently developed tools designed to address challenges in designing and analyzing data from complex experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan Athey, 2025. "Presidential Address: The Economist as Designer in the Innovation Process for Socially Impactful Digital Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(4), pages 1059-1099, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:4:p:1059-99
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.115.4.1059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.115.4.1059
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/22764
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.115.4.1059?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Chupein & Rachel Glennerster, 2018. "Evidence-Informed Policy from an International Perspective," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 678(1), pages 62-70, July.
    2. John A. List, 2024. "Optimally generate policy-based evidence before scaling," Nature, Nature, vol. 626(7999), pages 491-499, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yongheng Hu, 2025. "Heterogeneous Agents in the Data Economy," Papers 2509.09656, arXiv.org.
    2. Yongheng Hu, 2025. "Analysis Theory of Data Economy: Dataization, Technological Progress and Dynamic General Equilibrium," Papers 2507.13274, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.
    3. Herbert Dawid & Philipp Harting & Hankui Wang & Zhongli Wang & Jiachen Yi, 2025. "Agentic Workflows for Economic Research: Design and Implementation," Papers 2504.09736, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John List, 2025. "An Ode to Giants and Some Facts About Publishing in the JPE," Artefactual Field Experiments 00800, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. John List, 2026. "Natural Field Experiments Published in 2025 on FieldExperiments.com," Natural Field Experiments 00833, The Field Experiments Website.
    3. Estefan, Alejandro & Ordoñez, Romina & Parilli, Cristina & Winters, Paul, 2025. "Hybrid agricultural extension and the adoption of climate-resilient varieties: Evidence from oil palm in the Amazon," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    4. Guglielmo Briscese & John A. List & Sabrina Liu, 2025. "Navigating the College Affordability Crisis: Insights from College Savings Accounts," NBER Working Papers 34126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. John A. List & Haruka Uchida, 2024. "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Toward an Understanding of Fade-out in Early Childhood Education Programs," NBER Working Papers 33027, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Christian A. Vossler & Timothy N. Cason & James J. Murphy & Paul J. Ferraro & Todd L. Cherry & George Loewenstein & Peter Martinsson & Jason F. Shogren & Leaf van Boven & Daan van Soest, 2024. "The impact of experiments on environmental policy and natural resource management," Working Papers 2024-05, University of Tennessee, Department of Economics.
    7. Jana S. Hamdan & Tim Kaiser & Lukas Menkhoff & Yuanwei Xu, 2024. "Scaling Financial Education Among Micro-Entrepreneurs: A Randomized Saturation Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 11431, CESifo.
    8. Rohen Shah, 2026. "The Trade-off between Quality and Quantity: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Tutoring," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2493, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    9. Samuel Chang & Andrew Kennedy & Aaron Leonard & John A. List, 2024. "12 Best Practices for Leveraging Generative AI in Experimental Research," NBER Working Papers 33025, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Boomsma, Mirthe & Vringer, Kees & Soest, Daan van, 2025. "The impact of real-time energy consumption feedback on residential gas and electricity usage," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    11. Ragasa, Catherine & Spielman, David & Lynam, John, 2025. "Agricultural innovation frames, policies, and instruments: evolution, lessons, and future research," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    12. Robert Metcalfe & Sefi Roth, 2025. "Making the Invisible Visible: The Impact of Revealing Indoor Air Pollution on Behavior and Welfare," Framed Field Experiments 00819, The Field Experiments Website.
    13. John List, 2026. "A Summary of Framed Field Experiments Published in 2025 on FieldExperiments.com," Framed Field Experiments 00832, The Field Experiments Website.
    14. John A. List & Lina M. Ramírez & Julia Seither & Jaime Unda & Beatriz Vallejo, 2024. "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Misinformation: Evidence from a Demand Side Field Experiment on Critical Thinking," NBER Working Papers 32367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Shusaku Sasaki & Takunori Ishihara & Hirofumi Kurokawa, 2025. "Scaling Charitable Incentives: Policy Selection, Beliefs, and Evidence from a Field Experiment," Papers 2512.24852, arXiv.org.
    16. John A. List, 2024. "Field Experiments: Here Today Gone Tomorrow?," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 69(2), pages 214-234, October.
    17. John List, 2026. "A Summary of Artefactual Field Experiments on FieldExperiments.com in 2025: The Who's, What's, Where's, and When's," Artefactual Field Experiments 00831, The Field Experiments Website.
    18. Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed & Brent R. Hickman & John A. List & Ian Muir & Gregory K. Sun, 2026. "Salience and (Non-)Buyer's Remorse: Optimal Nonlinear Pricing with Cognitively Constrained Consumers," NBER Working Papers 35003, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. John List & Ioannis Pragidis & Michael Price, 2024. "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Prosumers: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment in Energy," Natural Field Experiments 00791, The Field Experiments Website.
    20. Guglielmo Briscese & John A. List, 2024. "Toward an Understanding of the Political Economy of Using Field Experiments in Policymaking," NBER Working Papers 33239, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • L80 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - General
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • Q16 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - R&D; Agricultural Technology; Biofuels; Agricultural Extension Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:4:p:1059-99. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.