Meghan Busse

Meghan Busse

Economist and first author of a 2015 study showing that the weather on the day of purchase shapes which cars people buy.

Who they are

Busse is listed in the Strategy department of the Kellogg School of Management's faculty directory at Northwestern University. Her 2015 paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, with Pope, Pope and Silva-Risso, used data on more than 40 million vehicle transactions. The choice of a convertible or a four-wheel drive depended heavily on the weather at the time of purchase, in a way the authors found inconsistent with classical utility theory. They considered a range of rational explanations, found that none fully accounted for the pattern, and proposed projection bias and salience as mechanisms.

With Duncan Simester and Florian Zettelmeyer she is also first author of a 2010 Marketing Science study of the 2005 US employee-pricing car promotions, in which sales surged though the prices were often no better than existing deals.

Key papers

Busse, M. R., Pope, D. G., Pope, J. C., & Silva-Risso, J. (2015). "The psychological effect of weather on car purchases." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 371-414. doi:10.1093/qje/qju033.

Busse, M. R., Simester, D. I., & Zettelmeyer, F. (2010). Marketing Science, 29(2), 268-290.

Key ideas

People buy for the conditions of the day as if those conditions will last. See Price Framing.

Sources

  1. Busse, Pope, Pope and Silva-Risso (2015), abstract read, 12 October 2026.
  2. Busse, Simester and Zettelmeyer (2010), as recorded in this publication's notes on The Choice Factory, Bias 6, p. 47.
  3. Kellogg School of Management faculty directory page, read 12 October 2026.