Publications

February 2025
Teaching Note

Barbie: Reviving a Cultural Icon at Mattel

By: Elie Ofek and Sarah Mehta

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 525-006 and 525-020. View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Marketing Strategy; Entertainment Marketing; Intellectual Property; Consumer Preferences; Toy Industry; Culture And Marketing; Societal Marketing; Brand Purpose; Diversity And Inclusion; Turnaround Strategies

21 Jun 2018
Blog Post

Living in a Dorm at HBS

Living in dormitories isn’t just for undergrads anymore—many HBS students opt to live in them during their two years at business school. There are many advantages to this living setup, including that they come fully furnished, are cleaned regularly, and provide access... View Details

17 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto

In a little more than a decade, investors have transformed cryptocurrency from a techno-curiosity into a trillion-dollar-plus opportunity that has the potential to one day reshape the global economy. Yet in the past 10 years, little has been revealed about the... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

What do Porsche fanatics, a video game hater, and a person who cooked two weeks' worth of meals in a rice cooker have in common? They are all "extreme consumers"—those whose tastes are so out there that mainstream market researchers tend to dismiss them as "noise" when... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

16 Apr 2019
Blog Post

How Being an Introvert Influenced My Business School Experience

recharges – by being with others or by spending time alone. Yet there are many other important aspects (well-summarized in the book Do What You Are) and these include: preferring to be more private, listening more than talking, favoring... View Details

Livia Alfonsi

Livia is a development economist whose research focuses on labor market frictions and determinants of labor market participation in low-income settings, with a particular emphasis on barriers to youth employment and female labor market participation. In a separate line... View Details

29 Apr 2025
HBS Seminar

Magie Cheng & David Huang

05 Sep 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market

Keywords: by Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan, and Francesco Franzoni

2007
Working Paper

Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement

By: Jerry R. Green and Daniel A. Hojman

We present a method for evaluating the welfare of a decision maker, based on observed choice data. Unlike the standard economic theory of revealed preference, our method can be used whether or not the observed choices are rational. Paralleling the standard theory we... View Details

Keywords: Welfare Economics; Behavioral Economics; Psychology; Decision Making; Economics; Voting

2015
Working Paper

Understanding Conformity: An Experimental Investigation

By: B. Douglas Bernheim and Christine L Exley

Some theories of conformity hold that social equilibrium either standardizes inferences or promotes a shared understanding of conventions and norms among individuals with fixed heterogeneous preferences (belief mechanisms). Others depict tastes as fluid and hence... View Details

Keywords: Conformity; Norms; Image Motivation; Prosocial Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Standards

SSRN

2009
Chapter

Altruistic Utility Functions for Joint Decisions

By: David E. Bell and Ralph L. Keeney

All of us make decisions that are not entirely self-centered; we voluntarily anticipate what we think to be the preferences of others and incorporate them into our decision making. We do this, not because of legal requirements or social norms, but because we are... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Characteristics; Welfare

August 2017 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Altoona State Investment Board & Bain Capital Fund XI

By: Josh Lerner and Ted Berk

Considers the decision faced by state pension fund manager Rod Calhoun as he decides whether to invest $200 million in Bain Capital's eleventh global buyout fund: Bain Capital Fund XI. For the fund, Bain was offering its limited partners a choice among three different... View Details

Keywords: Equity Method; Leveraged Buyout; Management Buyout; Capital; Design; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Leveraged Buyouts; Management; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Banking Industry; Massachusetts

Educators

Article

Brand (In)fidelity: When Flirting with the Competition Strengthens Brand Relationships

By: Irene Consiglio, Daniella Kupor, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton

We document the existence and consequences of brand flirting: a short-lived experience in which a consumer engages with and/or indulges in the alluring qualities of a brand without committing to it. We propose that brand flirting is exciting and that when consumers... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Brands and Branding; Emotions

December 2024
Article

Public Attitudes on Performance for Algorithmic and Human Decision-Makers

By: Kirk Bansak and Elisabeth Paulson

This study explores public preferences for algorithmic and human decision-makers (DMs) in high-stakes contexts, how these preferences are shaped by performance metrics, and whether public evaluations of performance differ depending on the type of DM. Leveraging a... View Details

Keywords: Public Opinion; Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making

October 2012 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Altoona State Investment Board: July 2012

By: Josh Lerner and Nathaniel Burbank

Considers the decision faced by state pension fund manager Rod Calhoun as he decides whether to invest $200 million in Bain Capital's eleventh global buyout fund: Bain Capital Fund XI. For the fund, Bain was offering its limited partners a choice between three... View Details

Keywords: Management Fees; Bain Capital; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Leveraged Buyouts; Banking Industry; Boston

Educators

14 Jul 2014
News

Pay Attention To Your “Extreme Consumers”

2014
Working Paper

Hidden Substitutes

By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

In this paper, we show that preferences exhibiting some forms of complementarity in fact have an underlying substitutable structure. Specifically, we show that some preferences that are not substitutable in the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts become... View Details

Keywords: Many-to-One Matching; Many-to-Many Matching; Stability; Substitutes; Matching With Contracts; Slot-Specific Priorities; Sherlock; Market Design; Contracts; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability

2025
Working Paper

Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?

By: Zoë B. Cullen, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

We estimate the value employees place on remote work using revealed preferences in a high-stakes, real-world context, focusing on U.S. tech workers. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles. Our estimates are three to... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Compensation and Benefits; Satisfaction; Value; Research

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February 2016 (Revised August 2020)
Case

InsightSquared: Developing the Sales and Marketing Plan

By: Mark Roberge, Tom Eisenmann and Frank Cespedes

Fred Shilmover and Sam Clemens prepared for their fourth quarter board meeting. They were excited to have scaled their software startup, InsightSquared, to $2 million in revenue and secured an $8 million round of venture capital. However, they disagreed on the path... View Details

Keywords: Sales Planning; Applications and Software; Marketing; Sales; Planning; Growth and Development Strategy

Educators