Serdar Simsek

I am an Assistant Professor within the Operations Management Group of Naveen Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas.

My research focuses on understanding and improving firms’ pricing decisions primarily in the retail industry and business-to-business markets. The main goal of my research is to provide actionable insights and methodologies that enable a firm to estimate and quantify the impact of consumers’ strategic and behavioral motives on their purchase decisions, and design effective pricing modalities that optimize profitability as well as consumer satisfaction accordingly.

I received my B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey in 2008 and my M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees in Decision, Risk, and Operations from Columbia University, Graduate School of Business in 2013. Prior to joining UTD, I worked as an Instructor/Researcher in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering of Cornell University for two years.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Columbia Business School (2008 — 2013)
• Bachelor of Science (BS) Bilkent University (2004 — 2008)

Companies

• Assistant Professor University of Texas at Dallas (2015)
• Instructor / Researcher Cornell University (2013 — 2015)
• PhD Candidate / Teaching Assistant Columbia Business School (2008 — 2013)
• Research Intern Sabre Holdings (2011 — 2011)
• Operations Research Analyst / Intern MAN Diesel & Turbo (2006 — 2006)

PUBLICATIONS and ARTICLES UNDER REVIEW*:

*My co-authors and I follow the practice of listing author names in alphabetical order in my papers.

• Kadiyala, Bharadwaj, Özalp Özer, and A. Serdar Şimşek. 2021. “Data-Driven Approaches to Targeting Promotion E-mails: The Case of Delayed Incentives.” Production and Operations Management 30(3): 766-782.
• Federgruen, Awi, Upmanu Lall, and A. Serdar Şimşek. 2019. “Supply Chain Analysis of Contract Farming.” Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 21(2): 361-378.
• Dong, James, A. Serdar Şimşek, and Huseyin Topaloglu. 2019. “Pricing Problems under the Markov Chain Choice Model.” Production and Operations Management 28(1): 157-175.
• Şimşek, A. Serdar, and Huseyin Topaloglu. 2018. “Technical note—An Expectation-Maximization Algorithm to Estimate Markov Chain Choice Model.” Operations Research 66(3): 748-760.
• Phillips, Robert, A. Serdar Şimşek, and Garrett van Ryzin. 2015. “The Effectiveness of Field Price Discretion: Empirical Evidence from Auto Lending.” Management Science 61(8): 1741-1759.
• Haruvy, Ernan, Meisam H. Nia, Özalp Özer, and A. Serdar Şimşek. “The Winner's Curse in Dynamic Forecasting of Auction Data: Empirical Evidence from eBay.” Major Revision from Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (MSOM). Under 3rd round review at MSOM.
• Kadiyala, Bharadwaj, Özalp Özer, and A. Serdar Şimşek. “Value of Promotions with Delayed Incentives: An Empirical Investigation of Gift Card Promotions.” Major Revision from Marketing Science (MKSC). Under 2nd round review at MKSC.
• Phillips, Robert, A. Serdar Şimşek, and Garrett van Ryzin. “Predicting Transaction Outcomes Under Customized Pricing with Discretion: A Structural Estimation Approach.” Major Revision from Production and Operations Management.
• Özer, Özalp, Inki Sul, and A. Serdar Şimşek. “Damned if You Buy, Damned if You Wait: An Empirical Investigation of Customer Regret Under Markdown Pricing and Its Implications to Retailing.” Reject & Resubmit from Management Science.
• Kok, Gurhan, and A. Serdar Şimşek. “Variety and Inventory Tradeoff in Retailing: An Empirical Study.” Reject & Resubmit from Management Science.
• Özer, Özalp, Arun Kumar Rout, and A. Serdar Şimşek. “Pricing and Inventory Management When Consumers’ Emotions Run High.” Under 1st round review at Management Science.