Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,074)
- Faculty Publications (374)
- 2014
- Working Paper
Conflicts of College Conference Realignment: Pursuing Revenue, Preserving Tradition, and Assessing the Future
By: Vadim Kogan and Stephen A. Greyser
Over the past two years, conference realignment has taken a front seat in the college sports landscape. Economic incentives were too attractive to overlook for some universities. College football programs across the country have a lot at stake, because for many,... View Details
- 2014
- Book
Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth
By: Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan
At the time of the American Revolution, China was the strongest, richest, and most powerful civilization in the world. The Great Qing Empire ruled China and dominated East Asia by a combination of power and cultural prestige. China's economy was the world's largest.... View Details
- February 2014
- Article
Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess
We present the results of an experiment that explores whether women are less willing than men to guess on multiple-choice tests. Our test consists of practice questions from SAT II subject tests; we vary whether a penalty is imposed for a wrong answer and the salience... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Prosocial Spending and Happiness: Using Money to Benefit Others Pays Off
By: Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin and Michael I. Norton
While a great deal of research has shown that people with more money are somewhat happier
than people with less money, our research demonstrates that how people spend their money also matters for their happiness. In particular, both correlational and... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised August 2015)
- Case
Janet Yellen and the Bernanke Fed
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Katrina Flanagan
The unelected Federal Reserve Chairman exerts exceptional influence over the U.S., in fact global, economy. As Janet Yellen prepared to take over the position, she would look back on Chairman Bernanke's tenure during the Great Recession. During that time, Bernanke was... View Details
- Article
Financial Incentives for Exercise Adherence in Adults: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
By: Marc S. Mitchell, Jack M. Goodman, David A. Alter, Leslie K. John, Paul I. Oh, Maureen T. Pakosh and Guy E. Faulkner
Context
Less than 5% of U.S. adults accumulate the required dose of exercise to maintain health. Behavioral economics has stimulated renewed interest in economic-based, population-level health interventions to address this issue. Despite widespread implementation of... View Details
- November 2013
- Article
Simplification and Saving
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
The daunting complexity of important financial decisions can lead to procrastination. We evaluate a low-cost intervention that substantially simplifies the retirement savings plan participation decision. Individuals received an opportunity to enroll in a retirement... View Details
- Article
Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance
By: George Loewenstein, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List and Kevin G. Volpp
We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured... View Details
- June 2013
- Article
What Is Privacy Worth?
By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein
Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy... View Details
- March 2013
- Case
Currency Wars
By: Laura Alfaro and Hilary White
In February 2013, the G-20 finance ministers met in Moscow, Russia to discuss the rising anxieties over a potential international currency war. It was speculated that certain countries were purposely devaluing their currencies in order to improve their competitiveness... View Details
Keywords: Currency; Competitiveness; Trade Policy; Devaluation; Exchange Rate; Monetary Policy; Quantitative Easing; Inflation Targeting; Capital Flows; Central Banking; Currency Exchange Rate; Competitive Strategy; Emerging Markets; Policy; Trade; Conflict and Resolution; Banking Industry; Public Administration Industry; Moscow
- March 2013 (Revised July 2014)
- Case
Bay Partners (A)
By: Josh Lerner and Lauren Barley
In April 2010, Salil Deshpande has recently resigned from Palo Alto, California-based Bay Partners (Bay) where he had been a general partner. Although Deshpande had built a successful track record at the venture firm, he resigned with two other Bay general partners as... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Non-Audit Services and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from 1978–1980
By: Kevin Koh, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We provide evidence for the long-standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978 to 1980. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a Psychological Universal
By: Lara B. Aknin, Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh, Elizabeth W. Dunn, John F. Helliwell, Justine Burns, Robert Biswas-Diener, Imelda Kemeza, Paul Nyende, Claire Ashton-James and Michael I. Norton
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
Vietnam: Sustaining the Growth of an Asian Tiger
By: Michael E. Porter and Christian H.M. Ketels
The case tracks Vietnam's economic policy choices and performance from the end of the Vietnam war to the Doi Moi economic reforms and the economic transformation that followed. Throughout this period, the country had become a darling of the international aid community.... View Details
- 2013
- Chapter
Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Current Survey
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
We survey the theory and evidence of behavioral corporate finance, which generally takes one of two approaches. The market timing and catering approach views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational managerial responses to securities mispricing. The... View Details
- 2013
- Book
Judgment in Managerial Decision Making
By: Max Bazerman and Don A. Moore
Is your judgment influenced by personal biases? In situations requiring careful judgment, we're all influenced by our own biases to some extent. But, with Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, you can learn how to overcome those biases to make better... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Planning Prompts as a Means of Increasing Preventive Screening Rates
By: Katherine L Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
- November 2012
- Case
Edison Schools, Inc.
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lauren Barley
Edison Schools, Inc., a pioneer in the for-profit management of public schools, demonstrates the challenges and opportunities related to private sector involvement in the delivery of a public good. Follows the organization from its start-up through its initial public... View Details
- 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
- November 2012
- Article
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management