- 16 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Information Avoidance and Image Concerns
People avoid information that might compel them to behave more generously. While many people avoid information due to concerns about their self-image, there is a substantial role for other reasons, such as inattention and confusion.
- 16 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Bollywood, Skin Color, and Sexism: The Role of the Film Industry in Emboldening and Contesting Stereotypes in India after Independence
Analysis of interviews with Bollywood producers and actors shows the extent of biases in the film industry during the decades after India’s independence in 1947. Gender stereotyping has remained a noteworthy feature of films, and bias towards light skin has only intensified.
- 08 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
In the Red: Overdrafts, Payday Lending, and the Underbanked
Low-income customers turn to payday lenders and check cashers for basic financial needs when traditional banks push them out of the system through high overdraft fees and other penalties. Reducing overdraft fees improves consumers’ overall financial health and access to cheaper credit.
- 02 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Nonprofits in Good Times and Bad Times
Tax returns from millions of US nonprofits reveal that charities do not expand during bad times, when need is the greatest. Although they are able to smooth the swings of their activities more than for-profit organizations, nonprofits exhibit substantial sensitivity to economic cycles.
- 01 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Learning with People Like Me: The Role of Age-Similar Peers on Online Business Course Engagement
Online learning usually has lower course engagement and higher dropout rates than in-person instruction. However, when classmates are of similar ages it helps boost retention and engagement. Similar-aged classmates have more in common, making interactions mutually rewarding.
- 01 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Hate Crime Increases with Minoritized Group Rank
Attitudes and behaviors toward social categories are not fixed but vary depending on perceived group size and rank. In the United States, an increase in a group’s size-based rank relative to those of other minority groups is associated with greater likelihood of being targeted with hate crimes.
- 25 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
India’s Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic
Policy makers in the developing world face important tradeoffs in reacting to a pandemic. The quick and complete recovery of India’s food supply chain suggests that strict lockdown measures at the onset of pandemics need not cause long-term economic damage.
- 25 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
The Evolutionary Nature of Breakthrough Innovation: Re-Evaluating the Exploration vs. Exploitation Dichotomy
Analyzing more than 2,500 firm-level innovation histories spanning 30 years, this study shows that breakthrough innovation requires organizational capabilities for both exploration and exploitation. Managers should therefore question the frequent advice to put exploration- and exploitation-related innovative efforts into different organizational units.
- 19 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
The Value of Descriptive Analytics: Evidence from Online Retailers
Analytics are descriptive when they describe what happened. Descriptive-analytics solutions are popular among marketers and retailers. This paper provides a benchmark for the benefits of using a descriptive dashboard and illustrates how to potentially extract these benefits.
- 14 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Dog Eat Dog: Measuring Network Effects Using a Digital Platform Merger
With heated debate over antitrust regulation of online platforms, this study finds that when a larger platform acquired its greatest competitor, users were not better off with a single platform compared with two competitors, despite marked efficiency improvements experienced by the acquiring platform.
- 11 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
This paper reviews and explains the growing literature focused on the political effects of immigration, and highlights fruitful avenues for future research. When compared to potential labor market competition and other economic forces, broadly defined cultural factors have a stronger political and social impact.
- 11 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Accounting for Product Impact in the Airlines Industry
A systematic methodology for measuring product impact can be applied across a range of industries. Examining two competitor companies in the airlines industry, this study finds that analyzing each dimension of product impact allows for deeper understanding of each company’s business strategies.
- 06 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Aggregate Advertising Expenditure in the US Economy: What's Up? Is It Real?
We analyze total United States advertising spending from 1960 to 2018. In nominal terms, the elasticity of annual advertising outlays with respect to gross domestic product appears to have increased substantially beginning in the late 1990s, roughly coinciding with the dramatic growth of internet-based advertising.
- 05 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting
Energy-producing firms are more likely to produce “blockbuster” green patents than other firms. Yet energy firms are excluded from many environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds, and are the targets of divestiture campaigns whose stated aims often include green energy innovation.
- 04 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Hospital Allocation and Racial Disparities in Health Care
Black Americans experience disparities in health outcomes in the United States relative to other demographic groups. This study of heart attack sufferers over two decades develops a framework to examine the allocation of health care and the effectiveness of medical treatments, including beta-blockers and other technologies.
- 04 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
The Twofold Effect of Customer Retention in Freemium Settings
Many digital products offer “freemiums”: that is, part of the product for free, often with advertising, and an enhanced customer experience for payment. This research, in a mobile game context, shows the importance of recognizing the short- and long-term effects on customer retention when managing the tradeoffs between free and paid aspects of freemium products.
- 17 Dec 2020
- Working Paper Summaries
How Do CEOs Make Strategy?
A study of 262 Harvard Business School-educated CEOs traces differences in strategic decision-making across managers. CEOs leading larger, faster-growing firms tend to make highly structured strategic decisions and use more analytical deliberation. Management education has long-lasting effects on decision-making.
- 15 Dec 2020
- Working Paper Summaries
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
The approach used by most economists to check academic research results is flawed for policymaking and evaluation. The authors propose an alternative method for designing economic policy analyses that might be applied to a wide range of economic policies.
- 15 Dec 2020
- Working Paper Summaries
Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation
New ventures catering to female customers should be aware that the underrepresentation of women among early users on digital platforms can reduce the venture’s growth and chances of survival. As a result of gaining fewer early users, these ventures reduce future product development and are less likely to raise VC funding.
Auditor Independence and Outsourcing: Aligning Incentives to Mitigate Shilling and Shirking
Firms use external auditors to monitor the quality of difficult-to-observe aspects of their business partners’ performance, including the working conditions of their suppliers. Firms can improve monitoring accuracy by having their own employees conduct some audits, and by rotating across third-party auditing firms.