Publications
Publications
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(2,854)
- Faculty Publications (935)
- Spring 2020
- Article
The Basic Economics of Internet Infrastructure
By: Shane Greenstein
The internet's structure and operations remain invisible to most economists. What determines the economic value of internet infrastructure and the incentives to improve it? What are the open research questions for the most salient policy issues? This article reviews... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Culture at Google
By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta
Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google’s contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of... View Details
Keywords: Human Resources; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Retention; Resignation and Termination; Labor; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Wages; Law; Lawsuits and Litigation; Rights; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Fairness; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Mission and Purpose; Social Psychology; Attitudes; Behavior; Conflict Management; Trust; Motivation and Incentives; Prejudice and Bias; Power and Influence; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure; Society; Social Issues; Culture; Civil Society or Community; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Gender; Race; Technology Industry; North and Central America; United States; California
- March 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Social Salary Setting at Spiber
By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears
Can a “set your own salary” system boost employee happiness and motivation? Spiber made synthetic silk built from proteins mimicking the proteins found in spider silk, the world’s toughest known material by weight. Kazuhide Sekiyama and Junichi Sugahara established... View Details
- March 2020
- Article
Do Managers Matter? A Natural Experiment from 42 R&D Labs in India
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Christos A. Makridis
We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the staggered entry of new managers into India’s 42 public R&D labs between 1994 and 2006 to study how alignment between the CEO and middle-level managers affect research productivity. We show that the introduction of new lab... View Details
- 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
- March 2020
- Article
The Politics of M&A Antitrust
By: Mihir N. Mehta, Suraj Srinivasan and Wanli Zhao
Antitrust regulators play a critical role in protecting market competition. We examine whether firms can use the political process to opportunistically influence antitrust reviews of corporate merger transactions. We exploit the fact that in some mergers, acquirers... View Details
- February 2020
- Article
Effects of a Tournament Incentive Plan Incorporating Managerial Discretion in a Geographically Dispersed Organization
By: Carolyn Deller and Tatiana Sandino
Using retail chain data, we study the effects of a tournament incentive plan based primarily on objective performance, but incorporating managerial discretion in the selection of winners. In principle, such plans could motivate employees to perform both at a high... View Details
- February 2020
- Article
Tales of Two Motives: Disclosure and Concealment
By: Leslie John, Michael L. Slepian and Diana Tamir
We posit that the desire to disclose personal information, and the desire to conceal it, are related yet distinct psychological motives. People often wish to conceal information, such as embarrassing aspects of the self. Yet people also seek to reveal information, such... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Effects of Information on Credit Market Competition: Evidence from Credit Cards
By: C. Fritz Foley, Agustin Hurtado, Andres Liberman and Alberto Sepulveda
We show empirically that public credit information increases competition in credit markets. We access data that cover all credit card borrowers in Chile and include details about relationship borrowers have with each lender. We exploit a natural experiment whereby a... View Details
- Article
What We Can Learn from Five Naturalistic Field Experiments That Failed to Shift Commuter Behaviour
By: Ariella S. Kristal and A.V. Whillans
Across five field experiments with employees of a large organization (n = 68,915), we examined whether standard behavioural interventions (“nudges”) successfully reduced single-occupancy vehicle commutes. In Studies 1 and 2, we sent letters and emails with nudges... View Details
- February 2020
- Article
Why Prosocial Referral Incentives Work: The Interplay of Reputational Benefits and Action Costs
By: Rachel Gershon, Cynthia Cryder and Leslie K. John
While selfish incentives typically outperform prosocial incentives, in the context of customer referral rewards, prosocial incentives can be more effective. Companies frequently offer “selfish” (i.e., sender-benefiting) referral incentives, offering customers financial... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
Banorte Móvil: Data-Driven Mobile Growth
By: Ayelet Israeli, Carla Larangeira and Mariana Cal
In mid-2019, Carlos Hank was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil—the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico’s most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
SK Group: Social Progress Credits
By: George Serafeim, Ethan Rouen and David Freiberg
SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength... View Details
Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Social Value; Social Development; Conglomerates; Measurement Of Purpose; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Capital Markets; Innovation; Environmental Impact; Collaboration; Social Enterprise; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Measurement and Metrics; Value Creation; Cooperation; Environmental Sustainability; Employment; Accounting; Energy Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Chemical Industry; South Korea
- January 2020
- Case
The Origins of Bell Labs
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
In 1947, scientists at Bell Labs invented the transistor—a tiny signal amplifier that would go on to become the fundamental building block of the digital age. But, confounding most traditional economic assumptions, it was not a vigorous startup that made this momentous... View Details
- January 2020
- Teaching Note
How to Encourage Others to Give and When to Pass the Torch? Insights from The Philanthropy Connection
By: Christine Exley and Kathleen McGinn
This case follows the co-founder and president, Marla Felcher, of The Philanthropy Connection (TPC). TPC is a nonprofit organization that centers around collective giving: members of TPC make an annual contribution that is then distributed to select nonprofit... View Details
- Article
Beyond Emotional Similarity: The Role of Situation-specific Motives
By: Amit Goldenberg, David Garcia, Eran Halperin, Jamil Zaki, Danyang Kong, Golijeh Golarai and James J. Gross
It is well established that people often express emotions that are similar to those of other group members. However, people do not always express emotions that are similar to other group members, and the factors that determine when similarity occurs are not yet clear.... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay
By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
Jack of All Trades and Master of Knowledge: The Role of Diversification in New Distant Knowledge Integration
By: Frank Nagle and Florenta Teodoridis
We consider the role of individual-level diversification as a mechanism through which skilled researchers engage in successful exploration—recognizing and integrating new knowledge external to one’s domains of expertise. To approach an ideal experiment, we (1) employ a... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
The Job Rating Game: Revolving Doors and Analyst Incentives
By: Elisabeth Kempf
Investment banks frequently hire analysts from rating agencies. While many argue that this "revolving door" creates captured analysts, it can also create incentives to improve accuracy. To study this issue, I construct an original dataset, linking analysts to their... View Details
- December 2019
- Case
Steemit: A New Social Media?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Alexander White and Karen Elterman
This case discusses the alternative social media site Steemit, including the principles it was founded on in 2016 and the challenges it faced in 2019. Steemit was a blockchain-based platform that aimed to differentiate itself from other social media companies by... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Decisions; Voting; Economic Systems; Money; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Goals and Objectives; Digital Platforms; Product Design; Design; Problems and Challenges; Network Effects; Motivation and Incentives; Social and Collaborative Networks; Reputation; Business Strategy; Competition; Internet and the Web; Social Media; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States; Virginia; New York (city, NY)