Publications

19 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 19, 2019

may be better directed at other reforms. Mission, Mission on the Wall — Do You Have a Purpose After All? By: Deore, Aishwarrya, Susanna Gallani, and Ranjani Krishnan Abstract— No abstract available. The Revision Bias By: Garcia-Rada,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

fields that they’ve performed well in these fields.” It’s unclear whether women would feel better about their abilities if they received repeated rounds of positive feedback, rather than one piece of good news. “I’d be interested to find out if the gender View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

May 2025
Article

Imagining the Future: Memory, Simulation and Beliefs

By: Pedro Bordalo, Giovanni Burro, Katherine B. Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer

How do people form beliefs about novel risks, with which they have little or no experience? Motivated by survey data on beliefs about Covid we collected in 2020, we build a model based on the psychology of selective memory. When a person thinks about an event,... View Details

Keywords: Expectations; Memory; COVID-19 Pandemic; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking

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

2010
Working Paper

Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans

By: Doug J. Chung, Thomas J. Steenburgh and K. Sudhir

We estimate a dynamic structural model of sales force response to a bonus based compensation plan. The paper has two main methodological innovations: First, we implement empirically the method proposed by Arcidiacono and Miller (2010) to accommodate unobserved latent... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives

SSRN

Research has shown that when speaking in front of a group, people’s attention tends to gets stuck on the most emotional faces, causing them to overestimate the group’s average emotional state. In this piece, the authors share two additional findings: First, the... View Details

2023
Working Paper

The Limits of Algorithmic Measures of Race in Studies of Outcome Disparities

By: David S. Scharfstein and Sergey Chernenko

We show that the use of algorithms to predict race has significant limitations in measuring and understanding the sources of racial disparities in finance, economics, and other contexts. First, we derive theoretically the direction and magnitude of measurement bias in... View Details

Keywords: Racial Disparity; Paycheck Protection Program; Measurement Error; AI and Machine Learning; Race; Measurement and Metrics; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Forecasting and Prediction; Outcome or Result

SSRN

April 2019
Article

Score Blending: How Scale Response Grouping Biases Perceived Standing

By: Ryan Hauser and Norbert Schwarz

Numerical values—from test scores to credit scores—inform us of our relative standing and can shape our decisions. The values are usually presented in a continuous format (which places scores on a single line) or a grouped format (which separates scores into several... View Details

Keywords: Decision-making; Scale; Decision Making; Perception

Find at Harvard

Article

Learning from Potentially Biased Statistics: Household Inflation Perceptions and Expectations in Argentina

By: Alberto Cavallo, Guillermo Cruces and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

When forming expectations, households may be influenced by perceived bias in the information they receive. In this paper, we study how individuals learn from potentially biased statistics using data from both a natural experiment and a survey experiment during a... View Details

Keywords: Inflation Expectations; Bayesian Estimation; Inflation and Deflation; Information; Household; Behavior; Argentina

Find at Harvard

Article

Excusing Selfishness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk

By: Christine L. Exley

Decisions involving charitable giving often occur under the shadow of risk. A common finding is that potential donors give less when there is greater risk that their donation will have less impact. While this behavior could be fully rationalized by standard economic... View Details

Keywords: Charitable Giving; Prosocial Behavior; Altruism; Risk Preferences; Risk and Uncertainty; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Behavior

Find at Harvard

Web

Faculty & Research

based on how similar they are to it. The model predicts that different experiences interfere with each other in recall and that non domain-specific experiences can bias beliefs based on their similarity to the assessed event. We test... View Details

07 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

When Glasses Land the Gig: Employers Still Choose Workers Who 'Look the Part'

write. You Might Also Like: Unpacking That Icky Feeling of 'Shopping' for Diverse Job Candidates Too Nice to Lead? Unpacking the Gender Stereotype That Holds Women Back When Bias Creeps into AI, Managers Can Stop It by Asking the Right... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

16 Oct 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Making the Gambler’s Fallacy Disappear: The Role of Experience

Keywords: by Gregory M. Barron & Stephen Leider

Research Summary

Selection and Market Reallocation: Productivity Gains from Multinational Production

By: Laura Alfaro

Assessing the productivity gains from multinational production has been a vital topic of economic research and policy debate. Positive aggregate productivity gains are often attributed to within-firm productivity improvement; however, an alternative, less emphasized... View Details

September 2020
Case

The Black New Venture Competition

By: Karen Mills, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich and Gabriella Elanbeck

Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for... View Details

Educators

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) inform medical practice, health care delivery, follow-on research, regulation, and health policy. Yet, many RCTs are inadequately randomized, blinded, and reported. To analyze scientists' and firms' incentives to meet clinical trial... View Details

2015
Working Paper

Measurement Errors of Expected-Return Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital

By: Charles C.Y. Wang

Despite their popularity as proxies of expected returns, the implied cost of capital's (ICC) measurement error properties are relatively unknown. Through an in-depth analysis of a popular implementation of ICCs by Gebhardt, Lee, and Swaminathan (2001) (GLS), I show... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Cost of Capital; Investment Return

SSRN

19 May 2015
First Look

First Look: May 19

and bank executives appear to profit from the analysts' bias since the bias is associated with higher levels of insider trading. Our results highlight the bias created by... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2011
Case

The Secrets to Managing Business Analytics Projects

By: Thomas H. Davenport, Stijn Viaene and Annabel Van den Bunder

Managers have used business analytics to inform their decision making for years. And while few companies would qualify as being what management innovation and strategy expert Thomas H. Davenport has dubbed "analytic competitors," more and more businesses are moving in... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Business or Company Management; Information Management