Publications
Publications
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(5,481)
- Faculty Publications (1,051)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 6 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 1: Mapping Functional Relationships
Organizations are formed in a free economy because an individual or group perceives value in carrying out a technical recipe that is beyond the capacity of a single person. Technology specifies what must be done, what resources must be assembled, what actions taken in... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Drinkworks: Home Bar by Keurig
By: Sunil Gupta, Jonathan Levav and Julia Kelley
In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company’s upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Markets; Bids and Bidding; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Market Design; Distribution; Distribution Channels; Product; Product Design; Product Development; Business Model; Customers; Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Making; Decisions; Goods and Commodities; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Research; Research and Development; Strategy; Adoption; Competitive Advantage; Segmentation; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Value; Value Creation; Food and Beverage Industry; Consumer Products Industry; North and Central America; United States
- 2020
- Working Paper
Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments
By: Iavor I Bojinov, David Simchi-Levi and Jinglong Zhao
In switchback experiments, a firm sequentially exposes an experimental unit to a random treatment, measures its response, and repeats the procedure for several periods to determine which treatment leads to the best outcome. Although practitioners have widely adopted... View Details
- Article
Common Variants of the Oxytocin Receptor Gene Do Not Predict the Positive Mood Benefits of Prosocial Spending
By: Ashley V. Whillans, Lara B. Aknin, Colin Ross, Lihan Chen and Frances S. Chen
Who benefits most from helping others? Previous research suggests that common polymorphisms of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) predict whether people behave generously and experience increases in positive mood in response to socially-focused experiences in daily... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Do Physician Incentives Increase Patient Medication Adherence?
By: Edward Kong, John Beshears, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian, Kevin Volpp, George Loewenstein, Jonathan Kolstad and James J. Choi
We conducted a randomized experiment (911 primary care practices and 8,935 nonadherent patients) to test the effect of paying physicians for increasing patient medication adherence in three drug classes: diabetes medication, antihypertensives, and statins. We measured... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Does Spending Money on Others Promote Happiness? A Registered Replication Report
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Jason Proulx, Iris Lok and Michael I. Norton
Research indicates that spending money on others—prosocial spending—leads to greater happiness than spending money on oneself (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008, 2014). These findings have received widespread attention because they offer insight into why people engage... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Institutional Environments and Monitoring Program Design
By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill
Activism seeking to improve labor conditions in global supply chains has led many transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and monitor suppliers for compliance. Drawing on thousands of audits conducted by a major social auditor, we identify structural... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Workplace Knowledge Flows
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside... View Details
- Article
The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Outcomes and Expectations
By: Alexander Bartik, Marianne Bertrand, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca and Christopher Stanton
To explore the impact of COVID on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred—just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the... View Details
- Article
Oracle Efficient Private Non-Convex Optimization
By: Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth, Giuseppe Vietri and Zhiwei Steven Wu
One of the most effective algorithms for differentially private learning and optimization is objective perturbation. This technique augments a given optimization problem (e.g. deriving from an ERM problem) with a random linear term, and then exactly solves it.... View Details
- Article
Assessing the Value of Pediatric Aerodigestive Care
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Chris Hartnick, Mahek Shah, Steven M. Coppess, Alisa Yamasaki, Kaalan E. Johnson, Jeremy Prager, Christopher T. Wootten, Thomas Gallagher and Evan Propst
Leaders at six hospitals conducted a research study to assess and compare the health outcomes and costs of pediatric aerodigestive care. Four of the hospitals delivered care with an integrated practice unit (IPU) while two delivered care traditionally, with isolated... View Details
- August 14, 2020
- Comment
How Has COVID-19 Affected Health Insurance Offered by Small Businesses in the U.S.? Early Evidence from a Survey
By: Leemore S. Dafny, Yin Wei Soon, Zoë Cullen and Christopher T. Stanton
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches toward its third quarter, loss of health insurance coverage has not figured prominently in the public debate. Data in this report demonstrate why that is, but also suggest that the apparent stability is fragile, with potentially... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Older People Are Less Pessimistic About the Health Risks of COVID-19
By: Pedro Bordalo, Katherine B. Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer
A central question for understanding behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic, at both the individual and collective levels, is how people perceive the health and economic risks they face. We conducted a survey of over 1,500 Americans from May 6–13, 2020, to understand... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Yiqing xia zhongguo qiye de duice xuanze [Lessons from Chinese Companies' Response to COVID-19]
By: Das Narayandas, Vinay Hebar and Liangliang Li
China was weeks ahead of the rest of the world in dealing with the pandemic and its fallout. To understand what's next, the authors conducted a series of 20 in-depth, in-person interviews, as well as a large-scale survey of more than 350 senior executives to ascertain... View Details
- June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Muddy Waters vs. eHealth: The Debate of a 'Lifetime'
By: Jonas Heese and Cristo Liautaud
In May 2020, an analyst was assessing eHealth’s performance. eHealth was an online / tele-sales broker of health insurance products. The stock had recently hit all-time highs, closing at a peak of $146 on March 4, 2020. But now, May 4, 2020, eHealth traded at $103. The... View Details
- June 2020
- Teaching Note
Understanding the Brand Equity of Nestlé Crunch Bar
By: Jill Avery and Gerald Zaltman
Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 519-061 and 519-062. In early 2018, Nestlé announced the sale of its U.S. candy-making division and a select collection of twenty of its confectionery brands, including the Nestlé Crunch Bar, to Ferrero SpA for $2.8 billion. Under the... View Details
- June 2020
- Background Note
Customer Management Dynamics and Cohort Analysis
By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
The digital revolution has allowed companies to amass considerable amounts of data on their customers. Using this information to generate actionable insights is fast becoming a critical skill that firms must master if they wish to effectively compete and win in today’s... View Details
- June 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Accounting for Leases at American Airlines (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Julia Kelley
In March 2020, as coronavirus reduced demand for air travel, an analyst was forecasting American Airlines’ (American’s) first quarter financial results. To develop a forecast, she needed to familiarize herself with Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-02, “Leases... View Details
Keywords: Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Finance; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leasing; Accounting Industry; Air Transportation Industry; North and Central America; United States
- June 2020
- Article
How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Accuracy and consistency are critical for inspections to be an effective, fair, and useful tool for assessing risks, quality, and suppliers—and for making decisions based on those assessments. We examine how inspector schedules could introduce bias that erodes... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Justice-as-a-Service at RightNow
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as minimal viable product, defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a... View Details