Publications

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Research Summary

Advertising and the Economics of Attention

Using novel technologies, such as eye- and face-tracking, to gauge attentional and emotional (facial) reactions to advertising, Professor Teixeira studies how advertising effectiveness can be optimized. Through complex statistical models of consumer response, he... View Details

17 Aug 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Empirical Economics of Online Attention

Keywords: by Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein, and Jeffrey Prince; Media & Broadcasting

2013
Working Paper

Asset Price Dynamics with Limited Attention

By: Mark Seasholes, Terrence Hendershott, Sunny X. Li and Albert J. Menkveld

This paper studies the role that limited attention and inefficient risk sharing play in stock price deviations from the efficient prices at horizons from one day to one month. We expand the Due (2010) slow-moving capital model to analyze multiple groups of investors... View Details

Keywords: Transitory Volatility; Limited Attention; Individuals; Market Makers; Asset Pricing; Financial Markets; Volatility

Winter 2020
Article

The Economics of Maps

By: Abhishek Nagaraj and Scott Stern

For centuries, maps have codified the extent of human geographic knowledge and shaped discovery and economic decision-making. Economists across many fields, including urban economics, public finance, political economy, and economic geography, have long employed maps,... View Details

Keywords: Maps; Economic Geography; Geography; Economics; History

Research Summary

Selective Attention and Learning

By: Joshua R. Schwartzstein

What do we notice, and how does this affect what we learn? Standard economic models of learning ignore memory by assuming that we remember everything. But there is growing recognition that memory is imperfect. Further, memory imperfections do not stem from limited... View Details

The Rising Cost of Consumer Attention

Attention is a necessary ingredient for effective advertising. The market for consumer attention (or “eyeballs”) has become so competitive that attention can be regarded as a currency. The rising cost of this ingredient in the marketplace is causing marketers to... View Details

2021
Working Paper

Salience

By: Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer

We review the fast-growing work on salience and economic behavior. Psychological research shows that salient stimuli attract human attention “bottom up” due to their high contrast with surroundings, their surprising nature relative to recalled experiences, or their... View Details

Keywords: Salience; Economic Behavior; Bottom Up Attention; Microeconomics; Decision Making; Behavior

2023
Chapter

Economic Globalization and Populism in Latin America and Beyond

By: Paula Rettl

Both populism and economic globalization have been on the rise in the last decades, motivating increasing scholarly attention to the phenomena and their relationship (see Rodrik 2021 for a recent review). However, the relationship between populism and economic... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Economic Globalization; Latin America; Economy; Macroeconomics; Economics; Globalized Economies and Regions; Globalization; Political Elections; Government and Politics; Finance; Geographic Location; Latin America

Purchase

13 Jun 2014
Op-Ed

World Cup Soccer: 770 Billion Minutes of Attention

buy the right to retransmit the games and sell ad space to their local advertisers. Another key principle of the Economics of Attention is that attention is valued in a... View Details

Keywords: by Thales Teixeira; Sports

August 2008
Article

Economic Links and Predictable Returns

By: Lauren Cohen and Andrea Frazzini

This paper finds evidence of return predictability across economically linked firms. We test the hypothesis that in the presence of investors subject to attention constraints, stock prices do not promptly incorporate news about economically related firms, generating... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Price; Assets; Analytics and Data Science; Customers; Stocks; Equity; Strategy; Investment Return; Forecasting and Prediction

Spring 2020
Article

The Basic Economics of Internet Infrastructure

By: Shane Greenstein

The internet's structure and operations remain invisible to most economists. What determines the economic value of internet infrastructure and the incentives to improve it? What are the open research questions for the most salient policy issues? This article reviews... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Infrastructure; Operations; Economics; Value

2014
Other Unpublished Work

Nudging Physicians to Pursue Careers in Underserved Areas: A Case for Behavioral Economics

By: Joseph Lopez, Mona Singh, Nava Ashraf and Joel Weissman

Currently, more than 60 million Americans live in "Health Professional Shortage Areas." Unless policymakers can encourage more physicians to practice in medically under-resourced areas, an increased number of uninsured individuals newly able to obtain health insurance... View Details

Keywords: Access To Care; Health Economics; Health Reform; Minority Health; Disparities; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

September 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Managing Multi-Media Audiences at WHDH (Boston)

By: Thales Teixeira and V. Kasturi Rangan

WHDH's Channel 7 News rose to the #1 position in Boston-area news broadcasting through its embrace of an innovative format and for affiliating with NBC. Since the early 2000s, however, other news programs had copied their format, and young audiences had begun to use... View Details

Keywords: Online News; Television Advertising; Attention Economics; Cross-media Efforts; Competition; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Marketing Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Digital Marketing; Television Entertainment; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Boston

Educators

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2013
Working Paper

International Health Economics

By: Mark Egan and Tomas J. Philipson

Perhaps because health care is a local service sector, health economists have paid little attention to international linkages between domestic health care economies. However, the growth in domestic health care sectors is often attributed to medical innovations whose... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Global Range; Economics

2024
Book

Deals: The Economic Structure of Business Transactions

By: Guhan Subramanian and Michael Klausner

Drawing on real-life cases from a wide range of industries, two acclaimed experts offer a sophisticated but accessible guide to business deals, designed to maximize value for your side.

Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Contracts

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04 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon

economy, but it uses IT the least." —David Cutler "We're not really in the post-reform era yet," said HBS professor Robert Huckman, faculty co-chair of the HBS Health Care Initiative. He introduced the three panelists: Harvard Kennedy School View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

24 Apr 2019
Research & Ideas

The 'Amazon Effect' Is Changing Online Price Competition—and the Fed Needs to Pay Attention

quickly to world events The upshot, Cavallo says, is that retail prices have become less insulated from economic shocks, like changes in fuel costs or exchange rates, as retailers capture changing costs more quickly. This helps explain... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Retail

2020
Working Paper

(When) Does Appearance Matter? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Subhradip Sarker

While there is evidence about labor market discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, we know little about whether physical appearance leads to discrimination in labor market outcomes. We deploy a randomized experiment on 1,000 respondents in India between... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Coronavirus; Discrimination; Homophily; Labor Market Mobility; Limited Attention; Resumes; Personal Characteristics; Prejudice and Bias

summer 2008
Article

Corporate Social Responsibility Through an Economic Lens

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Robert N. Stavins and Richard H.K. Vietor

Business leaders, government officials, and academics are focusing considerable attention on the concept of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR), particularly in the realm of environmental protection. Beyond complete compliance with environmental regulations, do... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Shareholder Relations; Environmental Sustainability