About

Ted Bergstrom is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at UC Santa Barbara, holding the Aaron and Cherie Raznick Endowed Chair in Economics. His research focuses on public economics, microeconomic theory, and experimental economics. As a key member of the Theory and Experiment Consortium, he contributes to advancing understanding in these areas, emphasizing the development and application of economic theory through experimental methods.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Telecommunications
• Environmental health
• Virology
• Medicine
• Pathology
• Econometrics
• Emergency medicine
• Pediatrics
• Economics

Selected publications

• To read and be read

  2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science

  I present a view similar to that of Poynder.

  Publisher

• Frequency and accuracy of proactive testing for COVID-19

  medRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2020 · 36 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science

  Abstract September 5, 2020 The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has proven difficult to control not only because of its high transmissibility, but because those who are infected readily spread the virus before symptoms appear, and because some infected individuals, though contagious, never exhibit symptoms. Proactive testing of asymptomatic individuals is therefore a powerful, and probably necessary, tool for preventing widespread infection in many settings. This paper explores the effectiveness of alternative testing regimes, in which the frequency, the accuracy, and the delay between testing and results determine the time path of infection. For a simple model of disease transmission, we present analytic formulas that determine the effect of testing on the expected number of days of during which an infectious individual is exposed to the population at large. This allows us to estimate the frequency of testing that would be required to prevent uncontrolled outbreaks, and to explore the trade-offs between frequency, accuracy, and delay in achieving this objective. We conclude by discussing applications to outbreak control on college and university campuses. Competing Interest Statement Ted Bergstrom and Haoran Li have no competing interests. Carl Bergstrom consults for Color Genomics on COVID testing schedules.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Frequency and Accuracy in Proactive Testing for COVID-19

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Medicine
  • Computer Science

  Business, Medicine and Health Sciences

  Publisher

• Let me, or let George? Motives of competing altruists

  Games and Economic Behavior · 2019-09-19 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• To Read and be Read: When monopolists control access to prestige

  2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Do Download Reports Reliably Measure Journal Usage? Trusting the Fox to Count Your Hens?

  College & Research Libraries · 2019-07-01 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Download rates of academic journals have joined citation counts as commonly used indicators of the value of journal subscriptions. While citations reflect worldwide influence, the value of a journal subscription to a single library is more reliably measured by the rate at which it is downloaded by local users. If reported download rates accurately measure local usage, there is a strong case for using them to compare the cost-effectiveness of journal subscriptions. We examine data for nearly 8,000 journals downloaded at the ten universities in the University of California system during a period of six years. We find that controlling for number of articles, publisher, and year of download, the ratio of downloads to citations differs substantially among academic disciplines. After adding academic disciplines to the control variables, there remain substantial “publisher effects”, with some publishers reporting significantly more downloads than would be predicted by the characteristics of their journals. These cross-publisher differences suggest that the currently available download statistics, which are supplied by publishers, are not sufficiently reliable to allow libraries to make subscription decisions based on price and reported downloads, at least without making an adjustment for publisher effects in download reports.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Living Supply and Demand Curves

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Social and Behavioral Sciences

• Efficient Ethical Rules for Volunteer’s Dilemmas

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2018-08-07 · 3 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper extends the classic Volunteer’s Dilemma game to environments in which individuals have differing costs and private information about their own costs. It explores\n the nature of symmetric ethical optimum strategies for Volunteer's Dilemma games with and without differing costs. Where costs differ, ethical optima are constructed by symmetrizing the game with a Rawlsian “Veil of Ignorance

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Looking under the COUNTER for overcounted downloads

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2018-06-05 · 5 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  by the COUNTER organization.These summary statistics conceal much information that is essential for evaluating reported downloads.We have obtained copies of server log files from four publishers that specify for each reported download, the article downloaded, the time of download, the format of the download and the IP address from which the download occurred.This enables us to estimate the frequency of multiple reported downloads of the same article by the same user, as well as the frequency of bulk downloads.We suggest that libraries using download statistics to evaluate bundled subscriptions from large publishers would benefit from requesting access to the publisher's server log files that record download details.

  Publisher

• The Good Samaritan and Traffic on the Road to Jericho

  American Economic Journal Microeconomics · 2017-04-24 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper studies a version of the Volunteer's Dilemma in which players sequentially observe someone in trouble and decide whether to help. Where preferences are identical, we show that if the frequency with which potential helpers appear is above some threshold, then as frequency of appearance increases, the probability that any individual stops diminishes, but the expected waiting time for help to appear is constant. Where costs of stopping differ among individuals, as the frequency of appearance increases, the expected waiting time for help to appear decreases, even though the probability that any individual stops diminishes. (JEL D62, D63, D64, H41)

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Bone Marrow Registries and Donor Motives

  NSF · $400k · 2009–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Carl T. Bergstrom

  University of Washington

  12 shared

• Rodney Garratt

  6 shared

• Damien Sheehan‐Connor

  Wesleyan University

  5 shared

• Mark Bagnoli

  Purdue University System

  5 shared

• Rod Garratt

  4 shared

• Jeffrey K. MacKie–Mason

  4 shared

• Alex Wood-Doughty

  University of Washington

  4 shared

• Greg Leo

  3 shared

Labs

• Theory and Experiment ConsortiumPI