Raluca Ursu joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Marketing in July 2016.
Professor Ursu’s research interests focus on the areas of consumer search and information acquisition techniques, with an emphasis on online markets. Her research tries to understand how consumers gather information about products and make choices in markets where they are faced with an overwhelming number of product options, but limited resources (e.g. time) to evaluate them. In one line of work, Professor Ursu studies the effect of ranking algorithms/recommendation systems on consumer choices, as well as proposes methods of improving these rankings to allow consumers to find matching products more quickly. Professor Ursu has also modeled decisions related to search fatigue, search duration, search revisits, prior information, and product discovery before search, as well as studied the effect of advertising on consumer search decisions. Her empirical work is guided by rigorous economic theory and supplemented by large data sets (online browsing data, eye-tracking data, in-store sales data) capturing real-world consumer behavior. She predominantly uses structural estimation methods to quantify the key factors that drive consumer choices but has also worked on theoretical projects and has designed experiments.
She received her B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.