Dan Goldstein

I'm a Partner at Microsoft Research and oversee the Economics & Computation and Computational Social Science areas. My training is in computer science and cognitive psychology. I work on human and AI decision making in economics and business. I tend to keep one foot in industry and one foot in academia.

All of my publications are on my CV. Some representative ones are here:

• Sam Zhang, Patrick Ryan Heck, Michelle Meyer, Christopher F. Chabris, Daniel G. Goldstein, Jake M Hofman. (2023). An illusion of predictability in scientific results: Even experts confuse inferential uncertainty and outcome variability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(33).

Economic Decision Making

• Balietti, Stefano, Lise Getoor, Daniel G. Goldstein, Duncan J. Watts. (2021). Reducing opinion polarization: Effects of exposure to similar people with differing political views. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(52). [DOI] [Supplement]
• Goldstein, Daniel G., R. Preston McAfee, Siddharth Suri and James R. Wright. (2020). Learning when to stop searching. Management Science, 66(3), 1375-1394. [DOI]
• Goldstein, Daniel G., Siddharth Suri, R. Preston McAfee, Matthew Ekstrand-Abueg, & Fernando Diaz. (2014). The economic and cognitive costs of annoying display advertisements. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(6), 742-752. [Finalist: Paul E. Green Award]
• Goel, Sharad, & Daniel G. Goldstein. (2014). Predicting individual behavior with social networks. Marketing Science, 33(1), 82-93. [Paper][Appendix]
• Goldstein, Daniel G., R. Preston McAfee, & Siddharth Suri. (2012). Improving the effectiveness of time-based display advertising. Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'12), 639-654. [Winner: Best Paper Award]
• Goel, Sharad, Duncan J. Watts, & Daniel G. Goldstein (2012). The structure of online diffusion networks. Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'12), 622-638.

Statistics and Decision Making

• Hardy, Matthew D., Sam Zhang, Jessica Hullman, Jake M. Hofman, Daniel G. Goldstein. (2024). Improving out-of-population prediction. The complementary effects of model assistance and judgmental bootstrapping. International Journal of Forecasting. [DOI]
• Hofman, Jake M., Daniel G. Goldstein, and Jessica Hullman. (2020). How visualizing inferential uncertainty can mislead readers about treatment effects in scientific results. Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). [Honorable Mention: Best Paper Award].
• Jung, Jongbin, Connor Concannon, Ravi Shroff, Sharad Goel, Daniel G. Goldstein. (2020). Simple rules to guide expert classifications. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 183(3), 771-800.
• Goldstein, D. G. & Gigerenzer, G. (2009). Fast and frugal forecasting. International Journal of Forecasting, 25, 760-772. [Winner: Outstanding Paper Award]

Theories of Decision Making

• Goldstein, D. G. & Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic. Psychological Review, 109, 75-90.
• Gigerenzer, G. & Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality. Psychological Review, 103, 650-669.
• Gigerenzer, G., Hoffrage, U., & Goldstein, D. G. (2008). Fast and frugal heuristics are plausible models of cognition: Reply to Dougherty, Franco - Watkins, and Thomas (2008). Psychological Review, 115(1), 230-237. [Postscript to above].
• Weber, E. U., Johnson, E. J., Milch, K. F., Chang, H., Brodscholl, J. C. & Goldstein, D. G. (2007). Asymmetric discounting in intertemporal choice: A Query Theory account. Psychological Science, 18(6), 516-523.

Medical Decision Making

• Johnson, E. J. & Goldstein, D. G. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science, 302, 1338-1339.
• Johnson, E. J. & Goldstein, D. G. (2004). Defaults and donation decisions. Transplantation, 78(12), 1713-1716.

Financial Decision Making

• Goldstein, Daniel G., Hershfield, Hal E. & Benartzi, Shlomo (2016). The illusion of wealth and its reversal. Journal of Marketing Research, 53(5), 804-813.
• Goldstein, Daniel G., Johnson, Eric J. & Sharpe, William F. (2008). Choosing outcomes versus choosing products: Consumer-focused retirement investment advice. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(3), 440-456.
• Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48, S23-S37.

Managerial Decision Making

• Hofman, Jake M., Daniel G. Goldstein and David M. Rothschild. (2023). A sports analogy for understanding different ways to use AI. Harvard Business Review.
• Jung, Jongbin, Connor Concannon, Ravi Shroff, Sharad Goel, Daniel G. Goldstein. (2017). Creating simple rules for complex decisions. Harvard Business Review OnPoint (Fall), 20-21.
• Goldstein, Daniel G., Eric J. Johnson, Andreas Herrmann, and Mark Heitmann (2008). Nudge your customers toward better choices. Harvard Business Review, 86(12), 99-105.
• Goldstein, Daniel G. (2007). Getting attention for unrecognized brands. Harvard Business Review, 85(3), 24-28. [En Español] [ בעברית ]
• Goldstein, Daniel G., and Dominique C. Goldstein (2006). Profiting from the long tail. Harvard Business Review, 84(6), 24-28.