Publications

SSRN

Article

Quantile Evaluation, Sensitivity to Bracketing, and Sharing Business Payoffs

By: Y. Grushka-Cockayne, K. C. Lichtendahl, V.R.R. Jose and R.L. Winkler

From forecasting competitions to conditional value-at-risk requirements, the use of multiple quantile assessments is growing in practice. To evaluate them, we use a rule from the general class of proper scoring rules for a forecaster’s multiple quantiles of a single... View Details

Keywords: Forecast; Aggregation; Operations; Forecasting and Prediction; Mathematical Methods

January 2000
Article

Maxmin Expected Utility through Statewise Combinations

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Peter Klibanoff and Emre Ozdenoren

This paper provides an axiomatic foundation for a maxmin expected utility over a set of priors (MMEU) decision rule in an environment where the elements of choice are Savage acts. The key axioms are stated using statewise combinations as in Gul (1992). View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods

March 2016 (Revised January 2020)
Teaching Note

Behavioural Insights Team (A) and (B)

By: Michael Luca and Patrick Rooney

The Behavioural Insights Team case introduces students to the concept of choice architecture and the value of experimental methods (sometimes called A/B testing) within organizational contexts. The exercise provides an opportunity for students to apply these principles... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Experiments; Choice Architecture; Public Entrepreneurship; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods; United Kingdom

1977
Chapter

A Reexamination of the Capital Asset Pricing Model

By: Robert C. Merton

Keywords: Capital; Asset Pricing; Mathematical Methods

March 2011 (Revised April 2021)
Case

The Whiz Kids

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

In October 1945, Henry Ford II received a telegram in his office at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan written by Charles "Tex" Thornton, a U.S. Air Force colonel. The telegram presented an opportunity for Ford to deploy a system of statistical control which... View Details

Keywords: Ford Motor Company; Statistical Control; Management Systems; Accounting; Operations; Strategy; Mathematical Methods; Auto Industry; United States

Educators

Profile

Mike Watitwa

to good schools, some of which were well beyond his means. He also had an unrivalled work ethic. He would wake up early in the morning and till the farm for about an hour before preparing to go to the nearby high school where he was a View Details

01 Jun 2017
News

Ask the Expert: On the Fly

(above: photo by Getty Images/Patrick Foto) A mathematics major, Don Carty (MBA 1971) has always seen the airline business as a huge puzzle, with the equation involving inventory and pricing, cruising allocations, weather, and holiday... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

1987
Chapter

On the Current State of the Stock Market Rationality Hypothesis

By: Robert C. Merton

Keywords: Financial Markets; Stocks; Mathematical Methods

2012
Working Paper

Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity

By: Jooa Julia Lee, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

People believe that weather conditions influence their everyday work life, but to date, little is known about how weather affects individual productivity. Most people believe that bad weather conditions reduce productivity. In this research, we predict and find just... View Details

Keywords: Productivity; Opportunity Cost; Distractions; Weather; Performance Productivity; Social Psychology; Mathematical Methods

2013
Working Paper

Competing Ad Auctions

By: Itai Ashlagi, Benjamin Edelman and Hoan Soo Lee

We present a two-stage model of competing ad auctions. Search engines attract users via Cournot-style competition. Meanwhile, each advertiser must pay a participation cost to use each ad platform, and advertiser entry strategies are derived using symmetric Bayes-Nash... View Details

Keywords: Online Advertising; Auctions; Market Participation; Market Platforms; Mathematical Methods; Competition

SSRN

2009
Working Paper

Farsighted Stability for Roommate Markets

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus, Flip Klijn and Markus Walzl

Using a bi-choice graph technique (Klaus and Klijn, 2009), we show that a matching for a roommate market indirectly dominates another matching if and only if no blocking pair of the former is matched in the latter (Proposition 1). Using this characterization of... View Details

Keywords: Two-Sided Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Balance and Stability

October 2004 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Wells REIT II

By: Arthur I Segel and Dwight Angelini

Dr. Richard Planter, a dentist, asks his financial adviser, Michael Saris, to review an offering memorandum for a new, private real estate investment trust. After reviewing the documents, Saris needs to develop an analytical framework and provide concrete advice... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Investment; Framework; Private Ownership; Mathematical Methods; Real Estate Industry

Educators

Article

Diverging Trends in Macro and Micro Volatility

By: Diego Comin and Sunil Mulani

This paper documents the diverging trends in volatility of the growth rate of sales at the aggregate and firm level. We establish that the upward trend in micro volatility is not simply driven by a compositional bias in the sample studied. We argue that this new fact... View Details

Keywords: Volatility; Mathematical Methods; Theory; Sales; Growth and Development

December 2001 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Delays at Logan Airport

By: V.G. Narayanan and George Batta

Logan Airport is facing mounting delays for flights landings and takeoffs, especially in inclement weather. An additional runway and peak-period pricing are two alternatives being considered. View Details

Keywords: Price; Problems and Challenges; Decision Making; Mathematical Methods; Air Transportation Industry; Service Industry; Boston

Educators

June 2008
Article

Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

I suppose that people react with anger when others show themselves not to be minimally altruistic. With heterogeneous agents, this can account for the experimental results of ultimatum and dictator games. Moreover, it can account for the surprisingly large fraction of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods