Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,353)
- Faculty Publications (800)
- 2017
- Working Paper
Crime and Violence: Desensitization in Victims to Watching Criminal Events
By: Rafael Di Tella, Lucia Freira, Ramiro H. Gálvez, Ernesto Schargrodsky, Diego Shalom and Mariano Sigman
We study desensitization to crime in a lab experiment by showing footage of criminal acts to a group of subjects, some of whom have been previously victimized. We measure biological markers of stress and behavioral indices of cognitive control before and after treated... View Details
- August 2017
- Article
Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?
By: Shlomo Benartzi, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler, Maya Shankar, Will Tucker-Ray, William J. Congdon and Steven Galing
Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people’s decisions without coercion or significant changes... View Details
Keywords: Nudge; Nudge Unit; Choice Architecture; Behavioral Science; Behavioral Economics; Savings; Pension Plan; Education; College Enrollment; Energy; Electricity Usage; Preventive Health; Influenza Vaccination; Flu Shot; Open Materials; Behavior; Governance; Economics; Policy; Power and Influence
- July 2017
- Case
Centerbridge Partners and Great Wolf Resorts: Buying from a Highly Regarded Competitor
By: Josh Lerner, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal
The case examines the March 2015 Centerbridge Partners investment decision regarding whether to acquire Great Wolf Resorts, a North American family-oriented indoor water parks and hotel operator, from a private equity (PE) competitor, Apollo Global Management. The case... View Details
Keywords: Private Equity Financing; Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities; CMBS; Secondary Buyouts; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Cost; Cost of Capital; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Accommodations Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States
- Article
Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive
By: Amelia Goranson, Ryan S. Ritter, Adam Waytz, Michael I. Norton and Kurt Gray
In people’s imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of... View Details
Keywords: Death; Language; LIWC; Positivity; Affective Forecasting; Open Materials; Perspective; Attitudes
- Other Article
Exploring the Relationship Between Architecture Coupling and Software Vulnerabilities
By: Robert Lagerstrom, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Daniel J. Sturtevant and Lee Doolan
Employing software metrics, such as size and complexity, for predicting defects has been given a lot of attention over the years and proven very useful. However, the few studies looking at software architecture and vulnerabilities are limited in scope and findings. We... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Knowledge Flows within Multinationals—Estimating Relative Influence of Headquarters and Host Context Using a Gravity Model
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Mike Horia Teodorescu and Tarun Khanna
From the perspective of a multinational subsidiary, we employ the classic gravity equation in economics to model and compare knowledge flows to the subsidiary from the MNC headquarters and from the host country context. We also generalize traditional economics gravity... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
U.S. High-Skilled Immigration, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Empirical Approaches and Evidence
By: William R. Kerr
High-skilled immigrants are a very important component of U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship. Immigrants account for roughly a quarter of U.S. workers in these fields, and they have a similar contribution in terms of output measures like patents or firm starts. This... View Details
- June 2017
- Case
AT&T Versus Verizon: A Financial Comparison
By: V.G. Narayanan and Joel L. Heilprin
This case asks students to prepare a report comparing the financial and operating performance of AT&T and Verizon. Taking the perspective of a communications industry analyst, they must also consider the differences between and implications of the companies' business... View Details
- 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
- May 2017
- Other Article
Stepwise Distributed Open Innovation Contests for Software Development: Acceleration of Genome-Wide Association Analysis
By: Andrew Hill, Po-Ru Loh, Ragu B. Bharadwaj, Pascal Pons, Jingbo Shang, Eva C. Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani, Iain Kilty and Scott Jelinsky
BACKGROUND:
The association of differing genotypes with disease-related phenotypic traits offers great potential to both help identify new therapeutic targets and support stratification of patients who would gain the greatest benefit from specific drug classes.... View Details
- Article
Ownership Dilemmas: The Case of Finders Versus Landowners
By: Peter DiScioli, Rachel Karpoff and Julian De Freitas
People sometimes disagree about who owns which objects, and these ownership dilemmas can
lead to costly disputes. We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying people’s judgments
about finder versus landowner cases, in which a person finds an object on someone... View Details
Keywords: Ownership Dilemma; Finders; Psychology And Law; Ownership; Property; Law; Social Psychology
- March 2017
- Case
SKS Microfinance (Abridged)
By: Shawn Cole and Theresa Chen
Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details
- March 2017
- Teaching Note
Sales Compensation Vignettes
This Teaching Note supports the case study comprising two vignettes about startup companies considering whether and how to change their sales compensation plans. The case allows students to compare and contrast the objectives, structure, and process of sales incentives... View Details
- March 2017
- Article
Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others
By: Todd Rogers, Richard Zeckhauser, F. Gino, Michael I. Norton and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Paltering is the active use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression. Across two pilot studies and six experiments, we identify paltering as a distinct form of deception. Paltering differs from lying by omission (the passive omission of relevant... View Details
- March 2017
- Article
Creativity in Unethical Behavior Attenuates Condemnation and Breeds Social Contagion: When Transgressions Seem to Create Little Harm
By: Scott S. Wiltermuth, Lynne C. Vincent and F. Gino
Across six studies, people judged creative forms of unethical behavior to be less unethical than less creative forms of unethical behavior, particularly when the unethical behaviors imposed relatively little direct harm on victims. As a result of perceiving behaviors... View Details
- Article
Highways and Spatial Location within Cities: Evidence from India
By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami and William R. Kerr
We investigate the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the spatial organization and efficiency of manufacturing activity. The GQ project upgraded the quality and width of 3,633 miles of road in India. We use a difference-in-difference estimation... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp
By: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth and Oliver Tercieux
In 2012, New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) became the first U.S. district to unify charter and traditional public school admissions in a single-offer assignment mechanism known as OneApp. The RSD also became the first district to use a mechanism based on Top... View Details
- Article
The Effects of Product Line Breadth: Evidence from the Automotive Industry
By: Antonio Moreno and Christian Terwiesch
Using a detailed data set from the U.S. automotive industry, we enrich the existing literature on product line breadth with new results that highlight previously unexplored operational aspects of its benefits and costs. We find that expanding product line breadth has a... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
Toward Transparent Reporting of Psychological Science
By: Etienne P. LeBel and Leslie K. John
In this chapter we make a case for increased transparency of the methods used to obtain research findings. Although comprehensive reporting facilitates accurate assessment of a paper’s claims, the current reporting norm is secrecy, not openness. We begin by putting... View Details
- 2017
- Case
Uncommon Schools (A): A Network of Networks
By: John J-H Kim and Sarah McAra
In 2013, Brett Peiser, CEO of the charter school management organization (CMO) Uncommon Schools, is reassessing the nonprofit’s strategy. For nearly 10 years, Uncommon had fulfilled its mission to bring high-quality education to students in low-income, urban areas... View Details