Mark Dean
Mark Dean is an economist and the first author, with Ravindran and Stoye, of "A better test of choice overload", a working paper first posted on arXiv in 2022 and revised since. The paper reopens a question many had treated as closed after the meta-analyses of 2010 and 2015.
Who they are
Dean works on the economics of decision-making. This site draws on the working paper only, which has not been through journal peer review in the version read.
This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.
Key papers
A better test of choice overload (2022, revised 2026), with Ravindran and Stoye. arXiv working paper 2212.03931. The abstract argues that existing tests of choice overload were likely underpowered, and reports that more powerful tests find strong evidence of choice overload in experimental data.
Key ideas
The central idea is that a null average can reflect weak tests as well as a weak effect. If the earlier experiments were too small or too blunt to detect overload, their average would understate it. The paper is a working paper, so its conclusions are provisional, but it means the debate that began with the jam study in 2000 is still open.
Sources
- Dean, M., Ravindran, D., & Stoye, J. (2022, revised 2026). A better test of choice overload. arXiv working paper 2212.03931.