Publications

2021
Working Paper

Time and the Value of Data

By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Newsha Ardalani and Marco Iansiti

Managers often believe that collecting more data will continually improve the accuracy of their machine learning models. However, we argue in this paper that when data lose relevance over time, it may be optimal to collect a limited amount of recent data instead of... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of AI; Machine Learning; Non-stationarity; Perishability; Value Depreciation; Analytics and Data Science; Value

SSRN

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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

July 2022
Article

The Pass-Through of Uncertainty Shocks to Households

By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani, Rodney Ramcharan, Vincent Yao and Edison Yu

Using new employer-employee matched data, this paper investigates the impact of uncertainty, as measured by idiosyncratic stock market volatility, on individual outcomes. We find that firms provide at best partial insurance to their workers. An increase in firm-level... View Details

Keywords: Employment Risk; Consumption; Employment; Risk and Uncertainty; System Shocks; Insurance; Household; Spending

Article

The Unintended Consequences of the Zero Lower Bound Policy

By: Marco Di Maggio and Marcin Kacperczyk

We study the impact of the zero lower bound interest rate policy on the industrial organization of the U.S. money fund industry. We find that in response to policies that maintain low interest rates, money funds change their product offerings by investing in riskier... View Details

Keywords: Quantitative Easing; Money Market Funds; Reaching For Yield; Risk Taking; Fund Exit; Unconventional Monetary Policy; Investment Funds; Interest Rates

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11 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 11, 2018

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55344 Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives' Marriage and Fertility By: Carlana, Michela, and Marco Tabellini Abstract—In this paper, we... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

5 Nov 2005 - 8 Nov 2005
Conference Presentation

New Perspectives on the Business Value of IT

By: David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats and Marco Iansiti

We sought to unravel the link between IT investment and firm performance by examining deployed IT functionality (ITF). First, ITF appears to be an important link in the IT spend to business value chain. Second, ITF does not seem to be a commodity and has... View Details

Keywords: Perspective; Value; Performance; Investment; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

by deviating frequently and in predictable ways from the recommendations offered by a centralized capacity planning model. Finally, we document that these discretionary capacity supply decisions exhibit a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Forthcoming
Article

In the Red: Overdrafts, Payday Lending and the Underbanked

By: Marco Di Maggio, Angela Ma and Emily Williams

The reordering of transactions from “high-to-low” is a controversial bank practice thought to maximize fees paid by low-income customers on overdrawn accounts. We exploit multiple class-action lawsuits resulting in mandatory changes to this practice, coupled with... View Details

Keywords: Overdraft; Payday Loans; Excessive Fees; Underbanked; Underserved; Income; Personal Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Banks and Banking

2021
Working Paper

Invisible Primes: Fintech Lending with Alternative Data

By: Marco Di Maggio, Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Don Carmichael

We exploit anonymized administrative data provided by a major fintech platform to investigate whether using alternative data to assess borrowers’ creditworthiness results in broader credit access. Comparing actual outcomes of the fintech platform’s model to... View Details

Keywords: Fintech Lending; Alternative Data; Machine Learning; Algorithm Bias; Finance; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Analytics and Data Science; Credit

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October 2021
Article

Fintech Borrowers: Lax Screening or Cream-Skimming?

By: Marco Di Maggio and Vincent Yao

Personal credit is the fastest-growing segment of the consumer credit market, mainly driven by fintech lenders' staggering expansion. We study this market using a unique individual-level data, which covers most of the top fintech and traditional lenders, and provides... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Lending; Consumer Finance; Credit History; Self-control; Present Bias; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Credit; Behavior

Article

The Future of Economic, Business, and Social History

By: G. Jones, Marco H.D. van Leeuwen and Stephen Broadberry

Three leading scholars in the fields of business, economic, and social history review the current state of these disciplines and reflect on their future trajectory. Geoffrey Jones reviews the development of business history since its birth at the Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: Economic History; Business History; History; Asia; Africa; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America

December 2008 (Revised February 2010)
Case

ViniBrasil: New Latitude Wines

By: David E. Bell, Marcos Flava Neves, Luciano Thome e Castro and Mary Louise Shelman

ViniBrasil is a small wine venture in Brazil started by a top Portuguese wine company, Dao Sul. ViniBrasil grows its grapes in a novel environment (close to the equator) using innovative management practices such as controlled irrigation and year-round harvesting.... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Global Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Management Practices and Processes; Demand and Consumers; Competition; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Brazil

Educators

August 2021
Case

Orchadio's First Two Split Experiments

By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Marco Iansiti and David Lane

Orchadio, a direct-to-consumer grocery business, needs to conduct its first two A/B tests—one to evaluate the effectiveness and functioning of its newly redesigned website, and one to market-test four versions of a new banner for the website. To do so, it will rely on... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Measurement and Metrics; Customization and Personalization; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

Educators

September 2015
Case

Deflategate and the National Football League

By: Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

On January 18, 2015, the New England Patriots faced the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game. In the second quarter, a Colts player intercepted a pass from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Colts equipment personnel alerted NFL officials that the ball's air... View Details

Keywords: ＂Deflategate＂; Analytics; National Football League; NFLPA; Roger Goodell; Tom Brady; Operations; United States

Educators