Job Market Paper:

McDowell, Tommy. "Refund Policies Driving Market Outcomes: Evidence from Airbnb 

I analyze how the choice of refund policy affects market outcomes using a rich dataset comprised of historical Airbnb bookings. I exploit within property variation in refund policy to find the effect of a change in policy on booking rates, daily price, and daily revenue. This paper uses an event study approach to motivate a generalized difference-in-difference model. Results indicate that a refund policy switch leads to decreased booking probabilities and lower daily revenue regardless of whether this swap makes the policy more renter friendly. Moreover, buyer preferences for flexibility are correlated not only with price, but with intrinsic product characteristics. This is a generalized result that applies to any market with a refund policy, of which there are many.

Working Papers:

McDowell, Tommy. "Renter Taste for Quality and Flexibility in the Airbnb Market" 

McDowell, Tommy. "Formula Pricing in the Meat-Packing Industry: How has the rise in formula pricing affected cattle markets?" 

Publications:

Chakravarty, Sarbarish, Tommy McDowell, and Michelle Osborne (2017). "Numerical Studies of the KP Line-solitons." Communication in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, Vol. 44, 2017, 37-51 

McDowell, Tommy, Michelle Osborne, Sarbarish Chakravarty, and Yuji Kodama (2017). On a Class of Initial Value Problems and Solitons for the KP Equation: A Numerical Study". Wave Motion, Vol. 72, 201-227