Davide Proserpio

News | Recent Publications | Working Papers | R.I.P. papers | Recent Talks | Students | Rejections | Teaching | Resources

I am an Associate Professor of Marketing at University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, where I study problems related to digital markets. Some of the topics I work on include the sharing economy, online trust and reputation, and advertising. Prior to joining Marshall, I obtained my PhD in Computer Science at Boston University under the supervision of Sharon Goldberg , John Byers, and Georgios Zervas (from Questrom School of Business).
More information about me can be found in my CV. I am also on Google Scholar and SSRN.

I recently started a lab and newsletter with Marco Giacoletti and Chris Parsons, USC Marshall R.E.A.L. (Real Estate Analytics Lab) which provides insights, grounded in rigorous data analysis, on the current state of real estate markets. You can subscribe here.

I am currently on leave from USC and working full time at Amazon in the Ad Measurments and Data Science organization.

News

Recent Publications (all)

  • Using Traditional Text Analysis and Large Language Models in Service Failure and Recovery SSRN
    Francisco Villarroel Ordenes, Grant Packard, Jochen Hartmann, and Davide Proserpio
    Journal of Service Research, 2025

  • Online Reviews: A Literature Review and Roadmap for Future Research SSRN
    Martina Pocchiari, Davide Proserpio, and Yaniv Dover
    IJRM, 2024

  • Words Meet Photos: When and Why Visual Content Increases Review Helpfulness SSRN
    Gizem Cylean, Kristin Diehl, and Davide Proserpio
    Journal of Marketing Research 61 (1), 5-26

  • I Hear You: Does Quality Improve with Customer Voice? SSRN
    Uttara M Ananthakrishnan, Davide Proserpio, and Siddhartha Sharma
    Marketing Science 42 (6), 1143-1161

    Abstract in proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'20).
    🏆 Exemplary Empirics Track Paper at EC'20.

  • Detecting Fake Review Buyers Using Network Structure: Direct Evidence from Amazon SSRN
    Sherry He, Brett Hollenbeck, Gijs Overgoor, Davide Proserpio, and Ali Tosyali
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 47 (2022): e2211932119.

  • The Effect of Short-Term Rentals on Residential Investment SSRN
    Ron Bekkerman, Maxime Cohen, Edward Kung, John Maiden, and Davide Proserpio
    Marketing Science, 2023, Vol.42(4), p.819–834

    Abstract in proceedings of the 23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'22).
    🏆 Best Paper Nominee at CIST'21.

  • The Market for Fake Reviews SSRN
    Sherry He, Brett Hollenbeck, and Davide Proserpio
    Marketing Science, 2022,Vol. 41(5),p.896-921

    Abstract in proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'21), Budapest, Hungary.
    🏆 Exemplary Empirics Track Paper at EC'21.
    🏆 Finalist John D. C. Little Award 2022.

    We wrote a piece for Cummincation of the ACM about this paper

    We wrote a letter about it for SIGecom Exchanges.

    Selected media coverage
    The Wall Street Journal (06/13/21)
    The New York Times (11/19/20)
    Corriere della Sera (09/27/20)
    Business Insider (09/07/20)
    CNBC (09/06/20)
    The Economist (09/03/2020)

Working Papers

  • TThe impact of sustainability programs on consumer purchase behavior: Evidence from Amazon SSRN
    Davide Proserpio, Al goli, Tyler Mangini, Ken Lau, and Daniela Yu
    Minor revision at IJRM

  • The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling SSRN
    Brett Hollenbeck, Poet Larsen, and Davide Proserpio

    Selected media coverage
    The Economist (12/05/24)
    New York Times (08/21/24)
    Bloomberg (07/26/24)
    Business Insider (08/01/24)

  • Information Signals in Sponsored Search: Evidence from Google's BERT SSRN
    Poet Larsen and Davide Proserpio
    Reject and resubmit at JMR

  • Algorithm failures and consumers response: Evidence from Zillow SSRN
    Isamar Troncoso, Runshan Fu, Nikhil Malik, and Davide Proserpio

R.I.P. Papers (papers I am not actively working on)

  • Product2Vec: Leveraging representation learning to model consumer product choice in large assortments SSRN
    Fanglin Chen, Xiao Liu, Davide Proserpio, and Isamar Troncoso

    A shorter version of this paper titled Studying Product Competition Using Representation Learning appears in the proceedings of the 43rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR2020), Xian, China.

  • Estimating the impact of Airbnb on the local economy: Evidence from the restaurant industry SSRN
    Suman Basuroy, Yongseok Kim, and Davide Proserpio

    A shorter version of this paper has been accepted at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 2021, Social Science and Sociophysics Track (without conference proceedings).

  • Baring the Sharing Economy: Concepts, Classification, Findings, and Future Directions SSRN
    Davide Proserpio and Gerard J. Tellis

Students

Here is a list of students I am currently working or worked with:

  • Isamar Troncoso (dissertation committee co-chair). Placement: Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School

  • Fanglin Chen (dissertation committee member). Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Miami Herbert Business School

  • Yongseok Kim (dissertation committee member). Placement: Assistant Professor, University of San Diego

  • Gizem Celyan (dissertation committee member). Placement: Postdoc, Yale University

  • Shomik Jain (USC Viterbi School of Engineering undergrad). Shomik will spend a year at Palantir Technologies before joining a PhD program at MIT in Fall 2022

  • Siddhartha Sharma (dissertation committee member). Placement: Assistant Professor, Kelley School of Business (IU Bloomington)

Recent Talks (all)

  • University of Las Vegas, February, 2025
    The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling

  • Virtual Quant Markeing Seminary, September, December 2024
    The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling

  • IESEG, 2024
    The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling

  • INSEAD, May 2024
    Algorithm failures and consumers response: Evidence from Zillow

  • Winter AMA, February 2024
    Lesson learned from Quant-CB collaborations

  • University of Maryland, September 2023
    Algorithm failures and consumers response: Evidence from Zillow

  • Bologna University, Marketing Department, July 2023
    Algorithm failures and consumers response: Evidence from Zillow

  • Third Conference on Customer Journeys 2023, June 2023
    Algorithm failures and consumers response: Evidence from Zillow

  • Third Conference on Customer Journeys 2023, June 2023
    Algorithm failures and consumers response: Evidence from Zillow

  • University of Miami, March 2023
    The Market for Fake Reviews

  • University of Arizona, February 2023
    The Market for Fake Reviews

Recent Rejections

Life isn't all beer and skittles, so in my academic life I also get tons of rejections. Here is a non-exhaustive list of recent rejections:

  • 2024 - Marketing Science (x2), UTD Bass Conference, EC24 (x2), PNAS (x2), Management Science (desk rejected), Nature (desk rejected), Winter AMA

  • 2023 - Journal of Urban Economics, USC Lusk research grant, Platfrom Strategy Research Symposium (BU), Marketing Science

  • 2022 - NBER Economic Analysis of Regulation Conference, WISE, AEJ: Policy

  • 2021 - Marketing Science, FTC Micro Conference, QJE, QME Conference, CIST, USC Lusk Center Grant, JMR

  • 2020 - ICWSM, WISE, NSF Postdoc scholarship, EC20 (two papers), Google Faculty Research Award, Amazon Research Awards, Management Science, Bass FORMS Conference (2 papers)

  • 2019 - Facebook grant, 13th Digital Economics conference (Toulouse), ICIS 2019, EC19, Management Science

Teaching

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals (Fall 2022)

  • PhD Seminar (Fall 2021)

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals (Fall 2021)

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals (Fall 2020)

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals (Fall 2019)

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals / MKT 385 -- Marketing of Creative Disruption and Innovation (Fall 2018)

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals (Fall 2017)

  • BUAD 307 - Marketing Fundamentals (Fall 2016)


Contact information
USC Marshall School of Business
Marketing Department
701 Exposition Blvd, HOH 332
Los Angeles, CA 90089.
Email: proserpi at marshall.usc.edu
Twitter: @dade_us
Github: https://github.com/dadepro