Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,933)
- Faculty Publications (164)
- July 16, 2016
- Article
A Game Theoretic Model for Resource Allocation Among Countermeasures with Multiple Attributes
By: Elisabeth C. Paulson, Igor Linkov and Jeffrey Keisler
We study a strategic, two-player, sequential game between an attacker and defender. The defender must allocate resources amongst possible countermeasures and across possible targets. The attacker then chooses a type of threat and a target to attack. This paper proposes... View Details
- June 2016
- Article
Vaccination Rates Are Associated with Functional Proximity but Not Base Proximity of Vaccination Clinics
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Gwendolyn I. Reynolds
Background: Routine annual influenza vaccinations are recommended for persons 6 months of age and older, but less than half of U.S. adults get vaccinated. Many employers offer employees free influenza vaccinations at workplace clinics, but even then take-up is... View Details
- Article
Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring
By: Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas
Online markets for remote labor services allow workers and firms to contract with each other directly. Despite this, intermediaries—called outsourcing agencies—have emerged in these markets. This paper shows that agencies signal to employers that inexperienced workers... View Details
- Article
Optimal Taxation When Children's Abilities Depend on Parents' Resources
By: Alexander Gelber and Matthew Weinzierl
Empirical research suggests that parents' economic resources affect their children's future earnings abilities. Optimal tax policy therefore treats future ability distributions as endogenous to current taxes. We model this endogeneity, calibrate the model to match... View Details
- March 2016
- Article
The Cost of Friendship
By: Paul A. Gompers, Vladimir Mukharlyamov and Yuhai Xuan
We investigate how personal characteristics affect people's desire to collaborate and whether this attraction enhances or detracts from performance in venture capital. We find that venture capitalists who share the same ethnic, educational, or career background are... View Details
- February 2016
- Article
After The Break-Up: The Relational and Reputational Consequences of Withdrawals from Venture Capital Syndicates
By: Pavel Zhelyazkov and Ranjay Gulati
Traditional research has long treated reputation as an egocentric attribute, typically described as an intangible asset directly shaped by the focal actor's track record. We argue, however, that reputation is dyadic: that an actor can have different reputations with... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Paying (for) Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Xiaosheng Mu and Alexander Peysakhovich
Human information processing is often modeled as costless Bayesian inference.
However, research in psychology shows that attention is a computationally costly and potentially limited resource. We study a Bayesian individual for whom computing posterior beliefs is... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Penalized Fast Subset Scanning
By: Skyler Speakman, Sriram Somanchi, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill
We present the penalized fast subset scan (PFSS), a new and general framework for scalable and accurate pattern detection. PFSS enables exact and efficient identification of the most anomalous subsets of the data, as measured by a likelihood ratio scan statistic.... View Details
- Article
The Ownership and Trading of Debt Claims in Chapter 11 Restructurings
By: Victoria Ivashina, Benjamin Iverson and David C. Smith
What is the ownership structure of bankrupt debt claims? How does the ownership evolve though bankruptcy? And how does debt ownership influence Chapter 11 outcomes? To answer these questions, we construct a data set that identifies the entire capital structure for 136... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
The Probability of Rare Disasters: Estimation and Implications
By: Emil Siriwardane
I analyze a rare disasters economy that yields a measure of the risk neutral probability of a macroeconomic disaster, p*t. A large panel of options data provides strong evidence that p*t is the single factor driving option-implied jump risk measures in the cross... View Details
- Article
An Evaluation of Money Market Fund Reform Proposals
U.S. money market mutual funds (MMFs) are an important source of dollar funding for global financial institutions, particularly those headquartered outside the U.S. MMFs proved to be a source of considerable instability during the financial crisis of 2007–2009,... View Details
- Fall 2015
- Article
Doing Well by Doing Good? Community Development Venture Capital
By: Josh Lerner and Anna Kovner
This paper examines the investments and performance of community development venture capital (CDVC). We find substantial differences between CDVC and traditional venture capital (VC) investments: CDVC investments are far more likely to be in nonmetropolitan regions and... View Details
- July 2015
- Article
Executives' 'Off-the-Job' Behaviors and Financial Reporting Risk
By: Robert Davidson, Aiyesha Dey and Abbie Smith
We examine how executives' behavior outside the workplace, as measured by their ownership of luxury goods (low “frugality”) and prior legal infractions, is related to financial reporting risk. We predict and find that chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief financial... View Details
- February 2015 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Quincy Apparel (A)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lisa Mazzanti
Quincy Apparel designs, manufactures and sells work apparel for young professional women that offers the fit and feel of high-end brands at a lower price. In late 2012, Quincy's cofounders are debating how to approach a crucial board meeting. Their seed-stage startup... View Details
- Article
Doing Business with Strangers: Reputation in Online Service Marketplaces
By: Antonio Moreno and Christian Terwiesch
Online service marketplaces allow service buyers to post their project requests and service providers to bid for them. To reduce the transactional risks, marketplaces typically track and publish previous seller performance. By analyzing a detailed transactional data... View Details
- November 2014
- Article
Evidence on Self-Stereotyping and the Contribution of Ideas
We use a lab experiment to explore the factors that predict an individual's decision to contribute her idea to a group. We find that contribution decisions depend upon the interaction of gender and the gender stereotype associated with the decision-making domain:... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Entrepreneurship as Experimentation
By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Entrepreneurship research is on the rise but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro... View Details
- Article
Entrepreneurship as Experimentation
By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Entrepreneurship research is on the rise, but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed, and unknowable until an investment is made. At a... View Details
- July 2014
- Article
Smart Money? The Effect of Education on Financial Outcomes
By: Shawn A. Cole, Anna Paulson and Gauri Kartini Shastry
Household financial decisions are important for household welfare, economic growth and financial stability. Yet, our understanding of the determinants of financial decision-making is limited. Exploiting exogenous variation in state compulsory schooling laws in both... View Details
- July–August 2014
- Article
The Crisis in Retirement Planning
By: Robert C. Merton
Corporate America began to really take notice of the looming retirement crisis in the wake of the dot-com crash, when companies in major industries went bankrupt in large part because of their inability to meet their pension obligations. The result was an acceleration... View Details