The Economics of Apologies

By Cardiff Garcia,

Published October 12, 2018 at 4:44 PM EDT

Companies know that when they screw up big time they need to issue an immediate and comprehensive apology. But what about the smaller stuff? If a company gets your order wrong or sends you a faulty product, what should they do? That's the topic of a new paper on the economics of apologies. A group of economists partnered with the ride-sharing app Uber to try and figure out the most effective way for a company to apologize to a wronged customer.

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Cardiff Garcia

Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.

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Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith