Publications

February 2005 (Revised November 2016)
Background Note

Forecasting the Adoption of a New Product

By: Elie Ofek

Provides tools and methodologies that allow forecasting demand for innovative new products. Highlights the Bass model—the theory behind it and ways to determine its parameters. Provides a detailed example of how to use the Bass model to forecast demand for satellite... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Mathematical Methods; Competition

Educators

Purchase

2014
Working Paper

Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog and Sunny Li Sun

We argue that the language spoken by corporate decision makers influences their firms' social responsibility and sustainability practices. Linguists suggest that obligatory future-time-reference (FTR) in a language reduces the psychological importance of the future.... View Details

Keywords: Language; Future-Time-Reference; Categories; Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Communication; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

SSRN

Summer 2014
Article

Delegation in Multi‐Establishment Firms: Adaptation vs. Coordination in I.T. Purchasing Authority

By: Kristina Steffenson McElheran

This paper conducts one of the first large-scale, establishment-level empirical studies of delegation within firms. Recent contributions to a rapidly growing theory literature have focused on the tradeoff between adaptation and coordination in determining... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Adaptation

February 2005
Article

Financial Analyst Characteristics and Herding Behavior in Forecasting

By: Michael B. Clement and Senyo Tse

This study classifies analysts' earnings forecasts as herding or bold and finds that (1) boldness likelihood increases with the analyst's prior accuracy, brokerage size, and experience and declines with the number of industries the analyst follows, consistent with... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Forecasting and Prediction; Performance Evaluation; Financial Services Industry

Purchase

20 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: December 20

Thought Theory (UTT); namely, that unconscious thought is a bottom-up process, whereas conscious thought is a top-down process. In two experiments on impression formation, participants read behavioral information about a fictitious person... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

December 2009
Article

Strategy-proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match

By: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag A. Pathak and Alvin E. Roth

The design of the New York City (NYC) High School match involved tradeoffs among efficiency, stability, and strategy-proofness that raise new theoretical questions. We analyze a model with indifferences—ties—in school preferences. Simulations with field data and the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Secondary Education; Marketplace Matching; Performance Efficiency; Mathematical Methods; Motivation and Incentives; Strategy; Balance and Stability

2012
Working Paper

~Why Do We Redistribute so Much but Tag so Little? Normative Diversity, Equal Sacrifice and Optimal Taxation

By: Matthew Weinzierl

Tagging is a free lunch in conventional optimal tax theory because it eases the classic tradeoff between efficiency and equality. But tagging is used in only limited ways in tax policy. I propose one explanation: conventional optimal tax theory has yet to capture the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cost; Framework; Policy; Taxation; Analytics and Data Science; Performance Efficiency; United States

SSRN

2005
Working Paper

Investor Sentiment and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We examine how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. Theory predicts that a broad wave of sentiment will disproportionately affect stocks whose valuations are highly subjective and are difficult to arbitrage. We test this prediction by studying... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Behavioral Finance; Stocks; Theory; Forecasting and Prediction

Forthcoming
Article

People Overestimate How Harshly They Are Evaluated for Disengaging from Passion Pursuit

By: Zachariah Berry, Brian J. Lucas and Jon M. Jachimowicz

The call to pursue one’s passion is ubiquitous advice, and prior research highlights the many upsides to doing so. To pursue one’s passion sustainably, people need to try different pursuits— and critically, drop those that are not tenable for them. However,... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Attitudes; Perception; Judgments; Behavior; Goals and Objectives

Web

Faculty & Research

was placed in receivership on the morning of March 10. HBS Working Paper Prices and Concentration: A U-shape? Theory and Evidence from Renewables By: Michele Fioretti, Junnan He and Jorge Tamayo We show that when firms compete via supply... View Details

Publications

2000-2005 Selected

Chiu, C-y, Morris, M.W., Hong, Y-y, & Menon, T. (2000). Motivated cultural cognition: The impact of implicit cultural theories on dispositional attribution varies as a function of Need for Closure.... View Details

19 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Inexperienced Investors and Market Bubbles

"sticky"—funds that perform well attract considerable inflows, but funds that underperform receive only modest outflows. Thus, it's not clear that inexperienced managers were punished for the decisions they made during the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

19 Feb 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: Self-Preservation through Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting

Keywords: by Lisa L. Shu, Francesca Gino & Max H. Bazerman

15 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How Does a Social Startup Decide to Commercialize? It May Depend on the Founder's Gender

how does the founder of a social venture decide to create a hybrid rather than a traditional charity? New research suggests the decision has a lot to do with the founder’s gender. "in communities where female leadership of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2022
Working Paper

Values as Luxury Goods and Political Polarization

By: Benjamin Enke, Mattias Polborn and Alex A Wu

Motivated by novel survey evidence, this paper develops a theory of political behavior in which values are a luxury good: the relative weight voters place on values rather than material considerations increases in income. The model predicts (i) voters who are... View Details

Keywords: Political Polarization; Government and Politics; Moral Sensibility; Luxury; Values and Beliefs; Voting

William Sahlman is a Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Mr. Sahlman received an A.B. degree in Economics from Princeton University (1972), an M.B.A. from Harvard University (1975), and a Ph.D. in Business... View Details

December 2012
Article

Evidence on the Use of Unverifiable Estimates in Required Goodwill Impairment

By: Karthik Ramanna and Ross L. Watts

SFAS 142 requires managers to estimate the current fair value of goodwill to determine goodwill write-offs. In promulgating the standard, the FASB predicted managers will, on average, use the fair value estimates to convey private information on future cash flows. The... View Details

Keywords: Goodwill Impairment; Fair-value Accounting; FASB; SFAS 142; Fair Value Accounting; Standards; Cash Flow; Agency Theory; Motivation and Incentives; Forecasting and Prediction; Goodwill Accounting

SSRN

Web

Business Economics - Doctoral

Econometrics Economic History Economic Theory Economics of Organization Entrepreneurship Finance Industrial Organization International Economics Labor Economics Macroeconomics Political Economy Public Economics Organizational Economics... View Details

June 2021
Technical Note

Introduction to Linear Regression

By: Michael Parzen and Paul Hamilton

This technical note introduces (from an applied point of view) the theory and application of simple and multiple linear regression. The motivation for the model is introduced, as well as how to interpret the summary output with regard to prediction and statistical... View Details

Keywords: Linear Regression; Regression; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Risk and Uncertainty; Theory; Compensation and Benefits; Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science