Publications

Educators

September 2017
Article

The Belief in a Favorable Future

By: Todd Rogers, Don A. Moore and Michael I. Norton

People believe that future others’ preferences and beliefs will change to align with their own. People holding a particular view (e.g., support of President Trump) are more likely to believe that future others will share their view than to believe that future others... View Details

Keywords: Social Cognition; Judgment; Prediction; Forecasting; False Consensus; Donation; Open Data; Open Materials; Preregistered; Forecasting and Prediction; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Behavior

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August 2017 (Revised December 2018)
Case

Tamarin App: Natural Language Processing

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

In this case, students explore the challenges of using sentiment analysis to monitor and understand public perception around a software application, Tamarin SEO App. Technical topics include building a filtering classifier using naive Bayes and sentiment analysis This... View Details

Keywords: Data Science; Branding; Data Analytics; Analytics and Data Science; Brands and Branding; Analysis; Perception; Planning

Educators

January 2019
Article

The ABCs of Financial Education: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes, Behavior, and Cognitive Biases

By: Fenella Carpena, Shawn A. Cole, Jeremy Shapiro and Bilal Zia

This paper uses a large-scale field experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive constraints that can stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes. The study complements financial education with (1) financial incentives on a... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Education; Attitudes; Behavior; Outcome or Result

Research Summary

Motivation and Incentive Design

Professor Ashraf's research in motivation and incentives focuses on how to design incentives in sectors where it is important that individuals are motivated by service, such as healthcare or environmental conservation. An important lever is the... View Details

03 Dec 2015
Blog Post

4 Things You Need to Know About Independent Projects

their time with us. While the first year curriculum gives all students the same foundational business skill set, the second year is more of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Some students choose to continue taking a broad swathe of courses, while others concentrate in... View Details

Article

Avoiding Overhead Aversion in Charity

By: Uri Gneezy, Elizabeth A. Keenan and Ayelet Gneezy

Donors tend to avoid charities that dedicate a high percentage of expenses to administrative and fundraising costs, limiting the ability of nonprofits to be effective. We propose a solution to this problem: Use donations from major philanthropists to cover overhead... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

Article

Marketing Complex Financial Products in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Rainfall Insurance in India

By: Sarthak Gaurav, Shawn A. Cole and Jeremy Tobacman

Recent financial liberalization in emerging economies has led to the rapid introduction of new financial products. Lack of experience with financial products, low levels of education, and low financial literacy may slow adoption of these products. This article reports... View Details

Keywords: Literacy; Insurance; Marketing; Decisions; Demand and Consumers; Financial Instruments; Emerging Markets; Education; Personal Finance; Agribusiness; Developing Countries and Economies; Innovation and Invention; Gujarat

06 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Climbing Down from the Ivory Tower

researchers design an experiment among themselves, only going to the field when they're ready to conduct the experiment on members of the community. In this case, though, the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education; Health

15 May 2019
HBS Seminar

Pascaline Dupas, Stanford University

27 Jan 2014
Blog Post

Opportunity Abounds

infrastructure), but the opportunities presented by India’s rise cannot be ignored by any business that improves quality of life. FIELD 2 was an amazing experience not just because of the travel, but also... View Details

Keywords: Technology

21 Aug 2014
Blog Post

HBS Social Enterprise Initiative Visits NYC

A lot can be achieved through emails, phone calls, and meetings, but being in the field helps broaden perspectives. The HBS Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) did just that – when Matt Segneri, Director, and Margot Dushin, Director of... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

Research Summary

Overview

I am an ethnographer and field researcher studying how people experience and interpret their work and cultural contexts, as well as how this shapes inequality and organizational outcomes like normative control. I specialize in utilizing in-depth, inductive field... View Details

April 2013
Article

Information and Subsidies: Complements or Substitutes?

By: Nava Ashraf, B. Kelsey Jack and Emir Kamenica

Does providing information about a product affect the impact of price subsidies on purchases of new or unfamiliar products? This question is particularly relevant for the introduction of health products in developing countries where consumers may be uncertain about... View Details

Keywords: Subsidies; Information; Consumer Behavior; Health; Zambia

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18 Nov 2020
Video

Taking it to the Street: Health Care Startups Bet on Success Despite COVID-19

17 Apr 2007
First Look

First Look: April 17, 2007

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=807123 Project Finance Acronyms Harvard Business School Note 207-086 Contains two parts: Part I contains a list of more than 500 acronyms for official institutions and other project finance terms; Part II... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2023
Article

Save More Today or Tomorrow: The Role of Urgency in Precommitment Design

By: Joseph Reiff, Hengchen Dai, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi

To encourage farsighted behaviors, past research suggests that marketers may be wise to invite consumers to pre-commit to adopt them “later.” However, the authors propose that people will draw different inferences from different types of pre-commitment offers, and that... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions

Research Summary

Microfinance

"Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines." (with Dean Karlan and Wesley Yin) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121, no. 2, 2006.
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Research Summary

Other research activities

Apart from my dissertation research on the EU ETS, I am interested in topics such as foreign direct investment, global strategy, institutions and sustainability. I am currently working with several faculty members at Harvard Business School on issues ranging from... View Details

Article

Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization

By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri

We present the results from a field experiment on team diversity. Individuals working as door-to-door canvassers for a non-profit organization were randomly assigned a teammate, a supervisor, and a list of individuals to canvass. This created random variation within... View Details

Keywords: Ethnic Diversity; Organizational Behavior; Labor Management; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Performance