Comparability - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

Relative Thinking and Consumer Choice

Fixed differences appear smaller when compared to large differences. Professor Schwartzstein has proposed a model of relative thinking, in which a person weighs a given change by less when he compares it to a larger range. Relative thinking implies that a person is... View Details

October 2019
Article

Making Sense of Recommendations

By: Michael Yeomans, Anuj Shah, Sendhil Mullainathan and Jon Kleinberg

Computer algorithms are increasingly being used to predict people's preferences and make recommendations. Although people frequently encounter these algorithms because they are cheap to scale, we do not know how they compare to human judgment. Here, we compare computer... View Details

Keywords: Recommender Systems; Artificial Intelligence; Interpretability; Information Technology; Forecasting and Prediction; Decision Making; Attitudes

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May 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Case

Harvard University and Urban Mining Industries: Decarbonizing the Supply Chain

By: Shirley Lu and Robert S. Kaplan

The case describes Harvard University’s consideration to decarbonize its supply chain by replacing cement with a low-carbon substitute called Pozzotive®. Developed and produced by Urban Mining Industries, Pozzotive® is a ground-glass material made with post-consumer... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Blockchain; Supply Chain; Green Technology; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability

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March 2011
Exercise

Customer Intelligence Advantage: Module 2 Assignment

By: F. Asis Martinez Jerez

This exercise directs students to analyze a customer-centric firm by first understanding the elements that characterize a customer-centric organization, then by capturing and comparing this firm's approach to customer-centricity. Students interview three levels in the... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Leadership; Competitive Advantage

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May 18, 2012
Article

Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss

By: David I Levine, Michael W. Toffel and Matthew S. Johnson

Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We... View Details

Keywords: Regulation; Occupational Safety; Evaluation; Regression; Matching; Difference In Differences; Safety; Health; Working Conditions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Advantage; Performance; Manufacturing Industry; California

2010
Working Paper

Corporate Governance When Founders Are Directors

By: Feng Li and Suraj Srinivasan

We examine CEO compensation, CEO retention policies, and M&A decisions in firms where founders serve as a director with a non-founder CEO (founder-director firms). We find that founder-director firms offer a different mix of incentives to their CEOs than other firms.... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Retention; Managerial Roles; United States

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02 Oct 2017
News

Why Apple Rival Samsung Also Wins If iPhone X Is a Hit

27 Feb 2024
Cold Call Podcast

How Could Harvard Decarbonize Its Supply Chain?

Keywords: Re: Robert S. Kaplan & Shirley Lu; Green Technology

28 Feb 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition and Public Goods in India

Keywords: by Abhijit Banerjee & Lakshmi Iyer

November–December 2024
Article

Outcome-Driven Dynamic Refugee Assignment with Allocation Balancing

By: Kirk Bansak and Elisabeth Paulson

This study proposes two new dynamic assignment algorithms to match refugees and asylum seekers to geographic localities within a host country. The first, currently implemented in a multi-year pilot in Switzerland, seeks to maximize the average predicted employment... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Refugees; Geographic Location; Employment

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May 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Cotopaxi: Managing Growth for Good

By: Andy Wu and Laura Huang

Cotopaxi, an innovative outdoor gear business targeting millennials, focuses on profit and social impact. This registered benefit corporation was formed by Davis Smith who coalesced his experiences as a Wharton MBA student along with professional knowledge from an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Venture; Benefit Corporation; B-Corp; Retail; Consumer Products; Apparel; Social Impact; Social Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Product Positioning; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry

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2023
Working Paper

Auditing Predictive Models for Intersectional Biases

By: Kate S. Boxer, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

Predictive models that satisfy group fairness criteria in aggregate for members of a protected class, but do not guarantee subgroup fairness, could produce biased predictions for individuals at the intersection of two or more protected classes. To address this risk, we... View Details

Keywords: Predictive Models; Bias; AI and Machine Learning

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12 Mar 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Using Online Prices for Measuring Real Consumption Across Countries

Keywords: by Alberto Cavallo, W. Erwin Diewert, Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar, and Marcel P. Timmer

12 Apr 2022
News

One or Two Days in the Office Is the ‘Sweet Spot’ of Hybrid Work

October 2007 (Revised January 2009)
Background Note

Analyzing Relative Costs

By: Hanna Halaburda and Jan W. Rivkin

Introduces students to the technique of relative cost analysis, a core technique of strategists. Among the intricate quantitative analyses that strategists undertake, relative cost analysis may be the most common. The goal of a relative cost analysis is simply to... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Competitive Advantage

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12 Nov 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence

Keywords: by Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca; Technology; Web Services

2009
Report

Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement

By: Mark R. Kramer, Marcie Parkhurst and Lalitha Vaidyanathan

The traditional approach to measuring each individual grant and nonprofit initiative separately prevents learning and improvement, because no 2 efforts can be compared on a consistent basis. This research highlights 20 social enterprises that developed innovative... View Details

Keywords: Impact Evaluation; Impact Measurement; Social Enterprise; Organizations; Performance Effectiveness; Measurement and Metrics

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2003
Book

Business History Around the World

By: Franco Amatori and Geoffrey Jones

This book offers the first in-depth international survey of current research and debates in business history. It provides wide-ranging surveys of the literature in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Japan and the Chinese-speaking world, and examines... View Details