Publications

19 Aug 2013
Research & Ideas

Studying How Income Inequality Shapes Behavior

public outrage and protests, as well as a fair amount of handwringing on the part of politicians. What's less clear is how this rising level of inequality has affected the nation. Researchers have tried to determine its impact on a wide array of indicators—among them... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

March 2020
Article

Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior

By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer and Charles C.Y. Wang

After decades of deprioritizing shareholders' economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country's "best-run" companies by annually selecting the 400 most profitable of its large and liquid... View Details

Keywords: JPX-Nikkei 400 Index; Status Incentives; Return On Equity; Capital Efficiency; Social Norms; Index Inclusion; Reputation Incentives; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Governance; Behavior; Investment Return; Status and Position; Japan

14 Apr 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage

Keywords: by Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider & Peter Tufano; Health

2023
Working Paper

The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through

By: Holly Dykstra, Shibeal O'Flaherty and A.V. Whillans

Behavioral interventions often focus on reducing friction to encourage behavior change. In contrast, we provide evidence that adding friction can promote long-term behavior change when behaviors involve repeated costly efforts over longer time horizons. In... View Details

Keywords: Friction; Behavior; Environmental Sustainability; Transportation; Outcome or Result

November 2012
Article

Empirical Observations on Longer-term Use of Incentives for Weight Loss

By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Behavioral economic-based interventions are emerging as powerful tools to help individuals accomplish their own goals, including weight loss. Deposit contract incentive systems give participants the opportunity to put their money down toward losing weight, which they... View Details

Keywords: Weight Loss; Obesity; Behavioral Economics; Intervention; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

17 Aug 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Dividends as Reference Points: A Behavioral Signaling Approach

Keywords: by Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler

June 2013
Article

Opting-in: Participation Bias in Economic Experiments

By: Robert Slonim, Carmen Wang, Ellen Garbarino and Danielle Merrett

Assuming individuals rationally decide whether to participate or not to participate in lab experiments, we hypothesize several non-representative biases in the characteristics of lab participants. We test the hypotheses by first collecting survey and experimental data... View Details

Keywords: Participation Bias; Laboratory Experiments; Prejudice and Bias; Research

Article

The Impact of Penalties for Wrong Answers on the Gender Gap in Test Scores

By: Katherine B. Coffman and David Klinowski

Multiple-choice exams play a critical role in university admissions across the world. A key question is whether imposing penalties for wrong answers on these exams deters guessing from women more than men, disadvantaging female test-takers. We consider data from a... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Standardized Testing; Gender; Higher Education; Prejudice and Bias

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

04 Aug 2006
What Do You Think?

What Happens When the Economics of Scarcity Meets the Economics of Abundance?

means to understand human behavior and finds ways to accommodate and direct such behaviors." Citing the works of Ronald Coase, David Touve opined, "It would seem that economics has grappled with... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2023
Working Paper

Scapegoating and Discrimination in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Airbnb

By: Michael Luca, Elizaveta Pronkina and Michelangelo Rossi

We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 20 percent decline in guests relative to hosts... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Behavioral Economics; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Prejudice and Bias; Digital Platforms; Design

1999
Chapter

The Cyclical Behavior of Prices and Costs

By: Julio J. Rotemberg and Michael Woodford

Keywords: Price; Cost; Business Cycles

March 2015 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Behavioural Insights Team (A)

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; Consumer Behavior; Taxation; Economics; Public Administration Industry; United Kingdom

Educators

Purchase

03 Mar 2010
What Do You Think?

To What Degree Does “Identity” Affect Economic Performance?

Summing Up Is "identity" a victim of competitiveness? A recent study of organizational behavior published by Timothy Kieningham and Lerzan Toksoy shows that employees' perceptions of their employers' levels of commitment to them... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

10 Sep 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior

Keywords: by Lalin Anik, Lara B. Aknin, Michael I. Norton & Elizabeth W. Dunn

July 2022
Article

The Developmental Origins and Behavioral Consequences of Attributions for Inequality

By: Antonya Marie Gonzalez, Lucia Macchia and Ashley V. Whillans

Attributions, or lay explanations for inequality, have been linked to inequality-relevant behavior. In adults and children, attributing inequality to an individual rather than contextual or structural causes is linked to greater support for economic inequality and less... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Behavior; Perception

05 Dec 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Walmart Defying Economic Gravity?

that the tradeoff between scale and friction is complex. For example, what effect does a company's origins, its beliefs, and how these are reflected in management behaviors (reflected in Walmart's emphasis on "family") reduce... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

March 2018
Article

Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior

By: Jackson G. Lu, Julia J. Lee, F. Gino and Adam D. Galinsky

Air pollution is a serious problem that influences billions of people globally. Although the health and environmental costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and... View Details

Keywords: Pollutants; Behavior; Moral Sensibility; Crime and Corruption