Publications

18 Aug 2018
News

Disrupted Teams are Rewriting the Rules of Office(less) Politics

December 2020
Article

Consumer Reactance to Promotional Favors

By: Marco Bertini and Aylin Aydinli

Promotional favors are an increasingly popular but seldom researched form of price promotion where the receipt of the saving by consumers depends on an action on their part that is nonmonetary in nature, such as completing a questionnaire, posting a review, or making a... View Details

Keywords: Promotional Favors; Conditional Discounts; Psychological Reactance; Price Promotions; Pricing; Marketing; Price; Consumer Behavior

16 Jun 2015
News

The Isolating Effects of Anxiety

Trends and Predictors of Biomedical Research Quality, 1990-2015

This work leverages the strengths of expert human assessments of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) included in Cochrane reviews with data science techniques to build a comprehensive database on biomedical research quality. The data links the full-text and... View Details

Forthcoming
Article

Second Chance: Life with Less Student Debt

By: Marco Di Maggio, Ankit Kalda and Vincent Yao

This paper examines the effect of student debt relief on individual credit and labor market outcomes. We exploit an episode of plausibly random debt discharge due to the loss of paperwork for thousands of borrowers to examine the effects of private student debt relief... View Details

Keywords: Student Debt; Private Student Loans; Legal Settlement; Mobility; Debt Collection; Debt Relief; Personal Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Outcome or Result

SSRN

2014
Working Paper

The Psycho-Social Benefits of Access to Contraception: Experimental Evidence from Zambia

By: Nava Ashraf, Marric Buessing, Erica Field and Jessica Leight

In a field experiment in Lusaka, Zambia, married couples in the catchment area of a family planning clinic were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (N=503) or a control group (N=768). Those in the treatment group received vouchers guaranteeing free and... View Details

Keywords: Contraceptive Access; Mental Health; Zambia

January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Chinese Restriction, Violence, and Exclusion in the United States

By: Tom Nicholas, Boyang Han and Tomas Rosales

Many early Chinese immigrants to the United States during the 1850s worked as traditional gold miners, but as gold mining declined in significance, an increasing number were employed as laborers for large scale construction projects such as railroads, roadways, and in... View Details

Keywords: Immigration Acts; Immigration; Labor; Jobs and Positions; Race; Social Issues; Laws and Statutes

Educators

Purchase

Article

Petting Away Pre-exam Stress: The Effect of Therapy Dog Sessions on Student Well-being

By: Emma Ward-Griffin, Patrick Klaiber, Hanne Collins, Rhea L. Owens, Stanley Coren and Frances S Chen

Recently, many universities have implemented programmes in which therapy dogs and their handlers visit college campuses. Despite the immense popularity of therapy dog sessions, few randomized studies have empirically tested the efficacy of such programmes. The present... View Details

Keywords: Well-being; Happiness

Register to Read

May 2020
Article

Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment

By: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low and Kathleen McGinn

Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources—specifically, negotiation skills—can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Competency and Skills; Training; Age; Gender; Education; Investment; Outcome or Result; Developing Countries and Economies

Register to Read

2006
Article

Deposit Collectors

By: Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan and Wesley Yin

Informal lending and savings institutions exist around the world, and often include regular door-to-door deposit collection of cash. Some banks have adopted similar services in order to expand access to banking services in areas that lack physical branches. Using a... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space

By: Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent space as an approach to control for latent homophily, the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." In a series of... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Social Network; Mobile App; Peer Effects; Latent Homophily; Latent Space; Proxy Variables; Familiarity; Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Social and Collaborative Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Power and Influence; Social Media

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Are Virtual Tours Still Worth It in Real Estate? Evidence from 75,000 Home Sales

processing. They examined each home’s sale price, number of days on the market, and initial price. Then, they screened for 3D virtual tours, which combine images and interactive features to simulate the experience of walking through a... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Real Estate

Research Summary

Individual Credit Constraints in Rural India (w/ Sendhil Mullainathan)

Credit access for the poor has recently been given center stage in the international policy arena. A plethora of reports and case studies have emphasized the enormous returns that micro-businesses face: the Year of Microcredit website notes that studies conducted in... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Finding Missing Markets (and a disturbing epilogue): Evidence from an Export Crop Adoption and Marketing Intervention in Kenya

By: Nava Ashraf, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan

In much of the developing world, many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options which appear to be more profitable. Thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing. We report here on a randomized controlled trial conducted... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Developing Countries and Economies; Trade; Profit; Product Marketing; Standards; Failure; Risk and Uncertainty; Non-Governmental Organizations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Service Industry; Kenya; Europe

27 Jan 2022
HBS Seminar

Hamsa Bastani, Wharton

Teaching Interest

Business Analysis and Valuation Using Financial Statements

By: Suraj Srinivasan

This course provides hands-on experience in financial statement analysis. Students are exposed to tools of financial analysis, theoretical concepts, and practical valuation issues. By the end of the course, students become comfortable with using firms' financial... View Details

Research Summary

My broad research interests include leadership, leader development, leading change, and organizational failures. However, my current focus for the past several years has been around LEADER DEVELOPMENT: How do leaders develop? How can we assist in the development of... View Details

February 2023
Article

Increasing the Demand for Workers with a Criminal Record

By: Zoë Cullen, Will Dobbie and Mitchell Hoffman

State and local policies increasingly restrict employers’ access to criminal records, but without addressing the underlying reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks. Employers may thus still want to ask about a job applicant’s criminal record... View Details

Keywords: Criminal Record; Hiring; Background Checks; Recruitment; Insurance