Conquering the dating market--from an economist's point of view

After more than twenty years, economist Paul Oyer found himself back on the dating scene--but what a difference a few years made. Dating was now dominated by sites like Match.com, eHarmony, and OkCupid. But Oyer had a secret weapon: economics.

It turns out that dating sites are no different than the markets Oyer had spent a lifetime studying. Monster.com, eBay, and other sites where individuals come together to find a match gave Oyer startling insight into the modern dating scene. The arcane language of...

While playing hooky from a conference in Boston a few years back, three former colleagues from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management hopped in a car and headed on a road trip. They pulled into a shoe store in Maine and noticed that the sales help was unusually pushy. After a few questions, they discovered the store had a "secret shopper" program, in which employees would be marked down if they were not sufficiently aggressive with customers. A lightbulb went off.
Instead of teaching the tried-and-true case studies involving GE and Microsoft, these three wise men decided to pull...