Publications

Educators

2024
Working Paper

Consumer Inertia and Market Power

By: Alexander MacKay and Marc Remer

We study the pricing decisions of firms in the presence of consumer inertia. Inertia, which can arise from habit formation, brand loyalty, and switching costs, generates dynamic pricing incentives. These incentives mediate the impact of competition on market power in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Inertia; Market Power; Dynamic Competition; Demand Estimation; Consumer Behavior; Markets; Performance; Competition; Price

SSRN

04 Oct 2019
HBS Seminar

Annabelle Fowler (Harvard University), Harvard University

2017
Chapter

Are Founder CEOs Good Managers?

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Megan Lawrence and Raffaella Sadun

We investigate the management practices adopted by firms where the founders are also the CEOs using data from the World Management Survey. We find that founder CEO firms have the lowest management scores of any owner-manager pair type and that this difference is... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance

28 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Can You Buy Creativity in the Gig Economy?

through a flat fee also propel them to produce more interesting content. The findings may prompt publishers to consider changing their pay structure in ways that reward writers for originality. Beyond publishing, the research sheds light on effective ways of tying pay... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

09 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Economics of Structured Finance

Keywords: by Joshua D. Coval, Jakub Jurek & Erik Stafford

September 2008 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Boston Teacher Residency: Developing a Strategy for Long-term Impact

By: Stacey M. Childress, Geoff Eckman Marietta and Sara Suchman

In June 2008, Jesse Solomon, the founding director of the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR), faced an important decision about the organization's strategic direction. Since its founding in 2003, 125 of its graduates had joined the Boston Public Schools (BPS) and BTR had... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Teaching; Entrepreneurship; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Improvement; Business Strategy; Education Industry; Boston

October 2014
Article

Good Cop, Bad Cop: Complementarities Between Debt and Equity in Disciplining Management

By: Alexander Guembel and Lucy White

In this paper we examine how the quantity of information generated about firm prospects can be improved by splitting a firm's cash flow into a "safe" claim (debt) and a "risky" claim (equity). The former, being relatively insensitive to upside risk, provides a... View Details

Keywords: Information; Borrowing and Debt; Equity; Corporate Finance

June 2012
Article

Sweeping Dishonesty under the Rug: How Unethical Actions Lead to Forgetting of Moral Rules

By: Lisa L. Shu and Francesca Gino

Dishonest behavior can have various psychological outcomes. We examine whether one consequence could be the forgetting of moral rules. In four experiments, participants were given the opportunity to behave dishonestly, and thus earn undeserved money, by over-reporting... View Details

Keywords: Dishonesty; Moral Codes; Moral Forgetting; Unethical Behavior; Behavior; Ethics; Research

June 2024
Article

Rationalizing Outcomes: Interdependent Learning in Competitive Markets

By: Anoop R. Menon and Dennis Yao

In this article we use simulation models to explore interdependent learning in competitive markets. Such interactions require attention to both the mental representations held by the management of the focal firm as well as the beliefs of that management about the... View Details

Keywords: Mental Models; Strategic Interactions; Rationalization; Explanation-based View; Competition

2011
Working Paper

Fiduciary Duties and Equity-Debtholder Conflicts

By: Bo Becker and Per Stromberg

We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine the effect of management fiduciary duties on equity-debt conflicts. A 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling changed the nature of corporate directors' fiduciary duties in firms incorporated in that state.... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Capital Structure; Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Laws and Statutes; Conflict and Resolution; Welfare or Wellbeing; Delaware

2017
Working Paper

Self-Employment Dynamics and the Returns to Entrepreneurship

By: Eleanor W. Dillon and Christopher T. Stanton

Small business owners and others in self-employment have the option to transition to paid work. If there is initial uncertainty about entrepreneurial earnings, this option increases the expected lifetime value of self-employment relative to pay in a single year. This... View Details

Keywords: Self-employed; Small Business; Business Earnings; Entrepreneurship; Ownership; Compensation and Benefits

October 2008
Article

The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns

By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy

This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Information Management; Social and Collaborative Networks; Announcements; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return; Investment Funds; Asset Pricing; Governing and Advisory Boards

19 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Funding Innovation: Is Your Firm Doing it Wrong?

$22 billion on R&D, while Apple spent a relatively paltry $2.5 billion. And yet, since that launch, Apple has far outperformed Nokia in terms of both its profit margins and its reputation for innovation. So what gives? “This was a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

November 2000 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Activity-Based Management at W.S. Industries (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Sanjay Pothen

W.S. Industries undertakes the design and implementation of an activity based costing (ABC) system, and the ABC information empowers workers to make process improvement decisions. Workers' incentive pay is tied to cost savings from process improvements. View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Motivation and Incentives; Performance Evaluation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Knowledge Management; Energy Industry; India

Educators

May 2004
Article

The Case for International Coordination of Electricity Regulation: Evidence from the Measurement of Efficiency in South America

A decade of experience has shown that monitoring the performance of public and private monopolies is the hardest part of electricity sector reform in South America—because operators control most of the information needed for effective regulation. South American... View Details

Keywords: Information; Mathematical Methods; Monopoly; Globalization; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; South America

Winter 2013
Article

Corporate Governance Reform and Executive Incentives: Implications for Investments and Risk-Taking

By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey and Thomas Lys

We investigate the mechanism through which the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) was associated with changes in corporate investment strategies. We document that the passage of the governance regulations in SOX was followed by a significant decline in pay‐performance... View Details