George Beknazar-Yuzbashev
George Beknazar-Yuzbashev is an economist and the first author of a pair of pre-registered studies from 2025 that went back to the sunk cost effect and tested it properly. Pre-registered means the analysis was declared before the data were collected, which removes the option of going looking for a result afterwards. The online task, with just over eighteen hundred people, found a small effect. The field experiment, across more than eleven thousand videos, found no overall effect at all.
Who they are
His work sits at the intersection of economics and online media, using field experiments on real platforms rather than laboratory tasks. No current institutional post is claimed on this page, because none was verified in the vault's pass and house practice is not to guess.
The field experiment varied how long a pre-roll advertisement ran before it could be skipped, then watched what people did next. It is the closest thing in the literature to a sunk-cost test in an actual viewing context.
Key papers
Beknazar-Yuzbashev, G., Ichiba, S., & Stalinski, M. (2025). "To the depths of the sunk cost: Experiments revisiting the elusive effect", Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 241, 107352. First author. Pre-registered, with an AEA randomised controlled trial registry entry. The online task, just over 1,800 participants, produced about a minute and a third of extra play on a fourteen-minute task. The field experiment, more than 11,000 videos, found no overall effect on engagement. Abstract only.
Key ideas
The null is not empty, and that is the point. Two real effects cancelled out. Some people stayed because they had already waited. More people abandoned the video before the wait had even begun. A null that contains two opposing forces tells you more than one that contains nothing.
The small laboratory-style effect is about a minute and a third on a fourteen-minute task. Real, and modest.
It is about a five-second advertisement, not a fourteen-hour season, and any argument about streaming that leans on it has to say so out loud.
This is the honest limit on the whole "you finish it because you started it" story. The best available evidence in a viewing setting says the pull exists and is smaller than the feeling suggests.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Beknazar-Yuzbashev, G., Ichiba, S., & Stalinski, M. (2025). Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 241, 107352. Abstract only.
- Vault note, 2026-09-11. Affiliation deliberately not asserted.