Tobias Klein

Tobias Klein studied economics at the University of Mannheim, the University of California at Berkeley, and University College London. He joined Tilburg University's faculty in 2007 after obtaining a Ph.D. From the University of Mannheim. He is deputy managing editor of the Econometrics Journal, associate editor of Empirical Economics and the Review of Economics, and was editor of a special issue of Information Economics and Policy on current regulatory issues in media and entertainment markets. His research is in health economics, empirical industrial organization, and econometrics. Among other things he currently works on the design of health insurance, the effects of patient cost sharing, consumer behavior, the effects of advertising, competition between online platforms, two-sided markets, and rating systems in online markets. Tobias Klein's research interests are more broadly related to the idea that recent developments in information and communication technologies together with the availability of big data can help us to address research questions in a novel way if we combine data with tractable models of individual behavior. Insights gained in this way then gives rise to the opportunity to implement welfare-improving policies that are at the same time in the interest of the firms offering a service. This can even lead to the creation of new markets. Examples are the online rating mechanisms used by eBay, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Yelp, Uber and others, which discipline market participants via online ratings that lead to more transparency. Another example is well-targeted advertising that reminds consumers of making a purchase if they intended to do so. A recurrent theme in his research is that seemingly small details may have economically important effects. In a recent paper he and his co-authors quantify the effect of framing patient cost sharing incentives in a different way. They find that this can affect yearly health care spending by as much as 7.2%.