Publications

18 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Have a Better Idea To Improve Health Care?

these innovations exist. (The remaining imperatives: Make value the central objective; promote novel approaches to process improvement; make consumerism really work; and decentralize approaches to problem solving.) "Health care, in terms of View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

18 Aug 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Non-Audit Services and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from 1978-1980

Keywords: by Kevin Koh, Shivaram Rajgopal & Suraj Srinivasan; Accounting

September–October 2020
Article

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

SSRN

July 2014
Article

Second-Opinion Pathologic Review is a Patient Safety Mechanism That Helps Reduce Error and Decrease Waste

By: Lavinia Middleton, Thomas W. Feeley, Heidi W. Albright, Ronald Walters and Stanley Hamilton

We have a crisis in health care delivery, originating from increasing health care costs and inconsistent quality-of-care measures. During the past several years, value-based health care delivery has gained increasing attention as an approach to control costs and... View Details

Keywords: Pathology; Diagnostic Errors; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; North and Central America

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Article

Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance

By: Katherine Baicker, Sendhil Mullainathan and Joshua Schwartzstein

A fundamental implication of standard moral hazard models is overuse of low-value medical care because copays are lower than costs. In these models, the demand curve alone can be used to make welfare statements, a fact relied on by much empirical work. There is ample... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance Industry

Research Summary

The Impact of ABC on Managerial Decisions

In this type of research, Ratna Sarkar seeks to determine whether, in fact, new cost systems such as ABC (Activity Based Costing) have a measurable effect on managerial decisions regarding product and customer mix.

The theory of ABC is now academically established,... View Details

February 2018
Case

Redfin

By: Marco Di Maggio and Julia Kelley

Redfin, a technology-powered residential real estate brokerage, was founded in 2002 with the intention of using technology to disrupt the real estate industry. Over the next 15 years, Redfin made several changes to its business model. Initially, the company provided... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Strategy; Decision Making; Real Estate Industry

June 1998 (Revised January 2000)
Case

Egghead.com

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

Egghead Software, an entrenched traditional chain retailer specializing in computer software and peripherals, had established a nationwide chain of mall and shopping center stores and a well-organized national brand. In early 1998, management made a highly unusual, and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry; Retail Industry

Article

Third-party Punishment as a Costly Signal of Trustworthiness

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Paul Bloom and David G. Rand

Third-party punishment (TPP), in which unaffected observers punish selfishness, promotes cooperation by deterring defection. But why should individuals choose to bear the costs of punishing? We present a game theoretic model of TPP as a costly signal of... View Details

Keywords: Third-party Punishment; Trustworthiness; Behavior; Trust; Game Theory

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October 2012 (Revised July 2014)
Background Note

The Role of the Government in the Early Development of American Venture Capital

By: Josh Lerner and Tom Nicholas

Whether the government or markets, or a mixture of both, can provide efficient and effective incentives for encouraging entrepreneurial activity and new venture financing is an age-old question. Public promotion efforts are controversial and in most cases they tend to... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business and Government Relations; United States

09 Apr 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Visualizing and Measuring Software Portfolio Architectures: A Flexibility Analysis

Keywords: by Robert Lagerstrom, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan MacCormack & David Dreyfus; Video Game; Web Services

2012
Article

Signing at the Beginning Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-reports in Comparison to Signing at the End

By: L. Shu, N. Mazar, F. Gino, D. Ariely and M. Bazerman

Many written forms required by businesses and governments rely on honest reporting. Proof of honest intent is typically provided through signature at the end of the document, e.g., tax returns or insurance policy forms. Still, people sometimes cheat to advance their... View Details

Keywords: Nudge; Morality; Honesty; Self-report; Policy-making; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Reports; Policy

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December 2003 (Revised October 2014)
Case

Alusaf Hillside Project

By: Kenneth S. Corts and John R. Wells

The aluminum industry has suffered from long periods of depressed prices and profits interspersed with relatively short-lived price and profit peaks. The case investigates why this has occured, focusing on the decision Alusaf must make on whether to invest in a major... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Business Cycles; Financial Crisis; Metals and Minerals; Financial Strategy; Investment; Price; Profit; Demand and Consumers; Industry Structures

Article

Trust and Incentives in Agency

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F Spulber

Contracts between a principal and an agent are not formed in a vacuum. Although formal contracts between a principal and an agent contain explicit incentives for performance, the relationship between a principal and an agent also involves implicit incentives. Three... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Motivation and Incentives; Agency Theory; Contracts; Market Transactions; Performance; Relationships; Societal Protocols; Legal Liability; Cost

October 2022
Case

Sustainable Finance at Itau BBA

By: George Serafeim, Maria Loumioti and Benjamin Maletta

As of August 2022, the Itau BBA had structured dozens of sustainability linked bonds, which made future interest payments a function of the borrower meeting a target for a sustainability metric, and had solidified its reputation as a pioneer of sustainable finance in... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Environmental Sustainability; Growth Strategy; Debt Contracting; Performance Metrics; Risk Assessment; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Financial Instruments; Risk Management; Debt Securities; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Latin America

09 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 9

massive cost overruns and delays. Second, the United States captured most of these economic benefits, partially because of its geographical situation and partially because it could leverage its military might to obtain a better agreement... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

July 2025
Article

Reputation Burning: Analyzing the Impact of Brand Sponsorship on Social Influencers

By: Mengjie Cheng and Shunyuan Zhang

The growth of the influencer marketing industry warrants an empirical examination of the effect of posting sponsored videos on influencers' reputations. We collected a novel dataset of user-generated YouTube videos created by prominent English-speaking influencers in... View Details

Keywords: Reputation; Mathematical Methods; Marketing Reference Programs; Social Media; Brands and Branding