Dawson Kaaua

Doctoral Candidate

Contact Information

Primary Email:
kaaua@wharton.upenn.edu

office Address:
526.6 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Overview

Dawson Kaaua is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Operations Management track. His research focuses on service operations in the public and private sectors and uses both experimental and quasi-experimental methods.

Dawson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with Honors from Stanford University and an MBA in Operations and Information Management and Finance with Honors from The Wharton School where he was a Palmer Scholar and Howard E. Mitchell Fellow. Dawson has industry experience in retail, management consulting, institutional investment, and education.

Research

Dawson Kaaua, Santiago Gallino, Christian Terwiesch, S Mehta (Working), The Impact of Waiting Location on Customer Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis of Preoperative Patient Flow.
Santiago Gallino and Dawson Kaaua (Work In Progress), How May I Help You? Inferring Service Quality from a Server’s Personal Details.
Gérard Cachon and Dawson Kaaua (Working), Serving Democracy: Evidence of Voting Resource Disparity in Florida.
Gérard Cachon and Dawson Kaaua (Working), Democracy on the Line: Polling Place Closures and their Estimated Impact on Wait Times in the 2016 Presidential Election in Georgia.

Teaching

Past Courses

OIDD1010 - Introduction To Oidd
OIDD 101 explores a variety of common quantitative modeling problems that arise frequently in business settings, and discusses how they can be formally modeled and solved with a combination of business insight and computer-based tools. The key topics covered include capacity management, service operations, inventory control, structured decision making, constrained optimization and simulation. This course teaches how to model complex business situations and how to master tools to improve business performance. The goal is to provide a set of foundational skills useful for future coursework atWharton as well as providing an overview of problems and techniques that characterize disciplines that comprise Operations and Information Management.

Activity

Latest Research

Dawson Kaaua, Santiago Gallino, Christian Terwiesch, S Mehta (Working), The Impact of Waiting Location on Customer Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis of Preoperative Patient Flow.

All Research