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      Cold Call
      A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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      • 05 Jan 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Using Behavioral Science to Improve Well-Being for Social Workers

      For child and family social workers, coping with the hardships of children and parents is part of the job. But that can cause a lot of stress. Is it possible for financially constrained organizations to improve social workers’ well-being using non-cash rewards, recognition, and other strategies from behavioral science? Assistant Professor Ashley Whillans describes the experience of Chief Executive Michael Sanders’ at the UK’s What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, as he led a research program aimed at improving the morale of social workers in her case, “The What Works Centre: Using Behavioral Science to Improve Social Worker Well-being.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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      Behavioral FinanceRemove Behavioral Finance →

      Page 1 of 6 Results
      • 15 Feb 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Can Financial Innovation Solve Household Reluctance to Take Risk?

      by Laurent Calvet, Claire Celerier, Paolo Sodini, and Boris Vallée

      Structured products are an innovative class of retail financial products with option-like features. This paper provides empirical evidence suggesting that innovative financial products like these can help alleviate loss aversion and thus the low participation of households in risky asset markets.

      • 13 Nov 2017
      • Research & Ideas

      Want to Be Happier? Spend Some Money on Avoiding Household Chores

      by Dina Gerdeman

      In an age of time scarcity, buying our way out of the negative moments in the day is an important key to happiness, according to research by Ashley V. Whillans, Michael I. Norton, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Paul Smeets, and Rene Bekkers. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 05 Oct 2017
      • Cold Call Podcast

      How to Promote Home Delivery of Prescription Drugs? Give Employees a 'Nudge'

      Re: John Beshears

      When Express Scripts wanted to convince corporate clients to switch to home delivery of prescription drugs, they knew logic wouldn't prevail. What then? John Beshears explains the answer, psychological nudges, in this podcast. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 19 Jul 2017
      • Research & Ideas

      Why Government 'Nudges' Motivate Good Citizen Behavior

      by Michael Blanding

      Research by John Beshears and colleagues finds that psychological nudges can be a cost-effective way for governments to get citizens to do the right thing. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 14 Dec 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The State of Small Business Lending: Innovation and Technology and the Implications for Regulation

      by Karen Gordon Mills and Brayden McCarthy

      New online fintech competitors have entered the small business lending space, filling a gap in small-dollar loans. More than 70 percent of small businesses seek loans in amounts under $250,000 and more than 60 percent want loans under $100,000. Gaps in regulation of the alternative small business lending market create issues of oversight and concerns about predatory lending. The paper first describes the current market for small business lending, including the new disruptors, and presents strategic alternatives for existing banks to partner with fintech entrants and compete in the new environment. The authors then describe the current regulatory environment with its large number of agencies, each with overlapping authority and mandates, and provide a set of recommendations for regulatory activity that will protect borrowers and investors in this space. These recommendations address concerns about systemic risk while trying to avoid dampening innovation that is filling the gap in small business access to credit.

      • 06 Jun 2007
      • Research & Ideas

      Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational Investors

      by Julia Hanna

      Do investors really behave rationally? Behavioral finance researchers Malcolm Baker and Joshua Coval don't think humans are such cold calculators. One proof: Individual and even institutional investors often give in to inertia and hold on to shares in unwanted stock. And therein lays opportunity for investment managers and firms. Key concepts include: Far from acting in their own best interest, many individual and institutional investors are more inertial than logical when it comes to emptying their portfolios of unwanted shares. Behavioral finance replaces the traditional and idealized idea of rational decision makers with real and imperfect people who have social, cognitive, and emotional biases. The resulting inefficiencies in the capital markets can create opportunities for investment managers and firms. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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