Evgeny Kagan

Evgeny Kagan

Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School

Publications

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Chasing Tails: How Do People Respond to Wait Time Distributions? (with Kyle Hyndman and Andrew Davis)

Accepted at Management Science, 2026

Waiting is something we encounter daily, whether standing in line at a coffee shop, awaiting a ride-share pickup at the airport, or sitting in a doctor’s office. In this study, we examine how different aspects of waiting affect our preferences among service providers. Our findings reveal that people respond negatively to waits that have a spike in long waiting times, and that standard models of risk aversion do not capture preferences well.

Pre-print

Why Are Customers Averse to Service Chatbots? (with Brett Hathaway and Maqbool Dada)

Forthcoming in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), 2026

Chatbot technology can help service firms reduce staffing needs and achieve cost savings. In this paper we use online experiments to examine how people respond to chatbots. We examine when and why chatbots are underutilized and propose a simple nudge to increase chatbot adoption.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

Startup Contracting and Entrepreneur-Investor Bargaining (with Kyle Hyndman and Anyan Qi)

Forthcoming in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), 2026

In this research we study how entrepreneurs and investors divide equity. We use the Nash bargaining framework and test several predictions in the lab. We find that the number of investors can have either a positive or a negative effect on the ability of the entrepreneur to retain equity in their venture. Preferred Stock contracts, which are popular in practice, lead to more aggressive investor bargaining tactics.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

On Repeat: Does Iteration Drive Innovation? (with Christian Jost, Sebastian Schiffels and Tobias Lieberum)

Forthcoming in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), 2025

In this paper we examine how agile development principles (iterative sprints, autonomy) affect innovation performance. We find that frequent iterations help improve performance in complex tasks by increasing exploration behaviors. The main mechanism is slower learning under sequential (non-iterative) workflow.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

Sequential Decision Making: From Decision Elicitation to Strategy Identification (with Stephen Leider and Ozge Sahin)

Published in Management Science, 2025

In this paper we look at how people make dynamic (sequential) decisions. We examine decision-making in a range of dynamic problems and find, unsurprisingly, that most people are not ‘forward-looking optimizers’. Rather, decision rules depend on the type of environment: decision rules are static in stopping problems (Stop in round X), but are quite sophisticated in other dynamic problems.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

Operational Strategies for Customer Service: A Gatekeeper Framework (with Maqbool Dada and Brett Hathaway)

Published in Production and Operations Management, 2025

This paper develops a model of customer service request resolution in contact centers. This allows us to examine the broader question of strategic selection of an appropriate mix of service channels: live-agent-only, chatbot-only, or both. We show that the availability of chatbot technology may change request resolution policies with important implications for service quality and cost

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

The Gatekeeper’s Dilemma: When Should I Transfer This Customer? (with Brett Hathaway and Maqbool Dada)

Published in Operations Research, 2023

This paper studies incentives for service workers handling customer service requests. We find that workers are able to incorporate congestion into their decisions - that is, they spend more time with customers when congestion is low, and less time when congestion is high. However, workers struggle to incorporate different components of compensation scheme, such as rewards for successful resolution, and costs for transfers.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

Equity Contracts and Incentive Design in Start-Up Teams (with Stephen Leider and William Lovejoy)

Published in Management Science, 2020

This paper studies incentive design in startups, specifically how to split equity in a startup. We find that founders who choose to split equally invest little effort into the venture after the split. Thus, a preference for a contract type can be seen as a signal of being a good (or bad) collaborator. Delaying the equity split until some work is done helps remove some of the collaboration difficulties.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print

Ideation-Execution in Product Development: An Experimental Analysis (with Stephen Leider and William Lovejoy)

Published in Management Science, 2018

This paper is about allocating development time between (creative) idea generation activities, and more production related execution activities. We find that developers benefit from firm deadlines early on in the creative process. Granting developers more autonomy leads to delays in idea inception and development.

Link to publication  |  Pre-print