Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(748)
- Faculty Publications (215)
- 2023
- Working Paper
Debiasing Treatment Effect Estimation for Privacy-Protected Data: A Model Auditing and Calibration Approach
By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza
Data-driven targeted interventions have become a powerful tool for organizations to optimize business outcomes
by utilizing individual-level data from experiments. A key element of this process is the estimation
of Conditional Average Treatment Effects (CATE), which... View Details
- 2023
- Chapter
Malleability Interventions in Intergroup Relations
By: Smadar Cohen-Chen, Amit Goldenberg, James J. Gross and Eran Halperin
One important characteristic of intergroup relations and conflicts is the fact that toxic or violent intergroup relations are often associated with fixed and stable perceptions of various entities, including the ingroup (stable and positive), the outgroup (stable and... View Details
- November 2023
- Article
Psychological Factors Underlying Attitudes toward AI Tools
By: Julian De Freitas, Stuti Agarwal, B. Schmitt and N. Haslam
What are the psychological factors driving attitudes toward AI tools, and how can resistance to AI systems be overcome when they are beneficial? In this perspective, we first organize the main sources of resistance into five main categories: opacity, emotionlessness,... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through
By: Holly Dykstra, Shibeal O'Flaherty and A.V. Whillans
Behavioral interventions often focus on reducing friction to encourage behavior change. In
contrast, we provide evidence that adding friction can promote long-term behavior change when
behaviors involve repeated costly efforts over longer time horizons. In... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Technical Note
Design and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions
By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei (David) Huang
Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting... View Details
- September 2023
- Supplement
Design and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions
By: Eva Ascarza
Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting... View Details
- September 2023
- Article
Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy: Experimental Evidence from Nine Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Vincenzo Galasso, Vincent Pons, Paola Profeta, Martin McKee, David Stuckler, Michael Becher, Sylvain Brouard and Martial Foucault
We study the impact of public health messages on intentions to vaccinate and vaccination uptakes, especially among hesitant groups. We performed an experiment comparing the effects of egoistic and altruistic messages on COVID-19 vaccine intentions and behaviour. We... View Details
- September–October 2023
- Article
The New Era of Industrial Policy Is Here
By: Willy C. Shih
Governments around the world are increasingly intervening in the private sector through industrial policies designed to help domestic sectors reach goals that markets alone are unlikely to achieve. Companies in targeted sectors—such as automakers, energy companies, and... View Details
- July 2023
- Article
Negative Expressions Are Shared More on Twitter for Public Figures Than for Ordinary Users
By: Jonas P. Schöne, David Garcia, Brian Parkinson and Amit Goldenberg
Social media users tend to produce content that contains more positive than negative emotional language. However, negative emotional language is more likely to be shared. To understand why, research has thus far focused on psychological processes associated with... View Details
- Summer 2023
- Article
Do Policies to Increase Access to Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder Work?
By: Eric Barrette, Leemore S. Dafny and Karen Shen
Even among commercially insured individuals, opioid use disorder is undertreated in the United States: nearly half receive no treatment within six months of a new diagnosis. Using a difference-in-differences specification exploiting the extension of insurance parity... View Details
- June 2023
- Simulation
Artea Dashboard and Targeting Policy Evaluation
By: Ayelet Israeli and Eva Ascarza
Companies deploy A/B experiments to gain valuable insights about their customers in order to answer strategic business problems. In marketing, A/B tests are often used to evaluate marketing interventions intended to generate incremental outcomes for the firm. The Artea... View Details
Keywords: Algorithm Bias; Algorithmic Data; Race And Ethnicity; Experimentation; Promotion; Marketing And Society; Big Data; Privacy; Data-driven Management; Data Analysis; Data Analytics; E-Commerce Strategy; Discrimination; Targeted Advertising; Targeted Policies; Pricing Algorithms; A/B Testing; Ethical Decision Making; Customer Base Analysis; Customer Heterogeneity; Coupons; Marketing; Race; Gender; Diversity; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Communications; Advertising; Decision Making; Ethics; E-commerce; Analytics and Data Science; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States
- 2023
- Working Paper
Setting Gendered Expectations? Recruiter Outreach Bias in Online Tech Training Programs
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Karim R. Lakhani and Roberto Fernandez
Competence development in digital technologies, analytics, and artificial intelligence is increasingly important to all types of organizations and their workforce. Universities and corporations are investing heavily in developing training programs, at all tenure... View Details
- 2023
- Article
Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control
By: Susanna Gallani
Can managers use monetary incentives to elicit cooperation from workers they cannot reward for their efforts? I study “conduit incentives,” an innovative incentive design, whereby managers influence bonus-ineligible workers’ effort by offering bonus-eligible employees... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior Modification; Peer Monitoring; Persistence Of Performance Improvements; Crowding Out; Implicit Incentives; Compensation; Healthcare; Social Pressure; Image Motivation; Incentives; Motivation; Performance; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; California
- July 2023
- Article
Political Strategies for Climate and Environmental Solutions
By: Jonas Meckling and Valerie Karplus
Many of the barriers to progress in addressing environmental problems, such as climate change, are political. We argue that politics should not be seen only as a constraint but be recognized as a target of intervention to advance environmental solutions. We use the... View Details
- 2023
- Case
Christiana Figueres and the Collaborative Approach to Negotiating Climate Action
By: James K. Sebenius, Laurence A. Green, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Lara SanPietro and Mina Subramanian
This case study centers on Harvard’s Program on Negotiation 2022 Great Negotiator, Christiana Figueres, and her efforts as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to build momentum for, and ultimately pass, the 2015... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Feature Importance Disparities for Data Bias Investigations
By: Peter W. Chang, Leor Fishman and Seth Neel
It is widely held that one cause of downstream bias in classifiers is bias present in the training data. Rectifying such biases may involve context-dependent interventions such as training separate models on subgroups, removing features with bias in the collection... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Deepa Bachu (A): Design Thinking at Pensaar Design
By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal
In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details
Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Design; Education; Training; Working Conditions; Business or Company Management; Production; Business Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement; Programs; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Groups and Teams; Labor and Management Relations; Rank and Position; Safety; Attitudes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Trust; Well-being; Consulting Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; India
- March 2023
- Supplement
Deepa Bachu (B): Insights and Experiments at Pensaar Design
By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal
In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details
Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Design; Training; Working Conditions; Business or Company Management; Production; Business Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement; Programs; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Groups and Teams; Labor and Management Relations; Rank and Position; Safety; Attitudes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Trust; Well-being; Consulting Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; India
- March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Pratham 2.0: Sustaining Innovation
By: Brian Trelstad, Samantha Webster and Malini Sen
Pratham is a Mumbai-based nonprofit, which focuses on high-quality, low-cost, and replicable interventions to address gaps in India’s education system. From inception, it has pioneered innovation, from early childhood learning centers to adaptive literacy programs, to... View Details
- 2023
- Article
A Randomized Trial of Behavioral Nudges Delivered through Text Messages to Increase Influenza Vaccination among Patients with an Upcoming Primary Care Visit
By: Mitesh S. Patel, Katherine L. Milkman, Linnea Gandhi, Heather N. Graci, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Jake Rothschild, Modupe Akinola, John Beshears, Jonathan E. Bogard, Alison Buttenheim, Christopher Chabris, Gretchen B. Chapman, James J. Choi, Hengchen Dai, Craig R. Fox, Amir Goren, Matthew D. Hilchey, Jillian Hmurovic, Leslie John, Dean Karlan, Melanie Kim, David Laibson, Cait Lamberton, Brigitte C. Madrian, Michelle N. Meyer, Maria Modanu, Jimin Nam, Todd Rogers, Renante Rondina, Silvia Saccardo, Maheen Shermohammed, Dilip Soman, Jehan Sparks, Caleb Warren, Megan Weber, Ron Berman, Chalanda N. Evans, Seung Hyeong Lee, Christopher K. Snider, Eli Tsukayama, Christophe Van den Bulte, Kevin G. Volpp and Angela L. Duckworth
Purpose: To evaluate if nudges delivered by text message prior to an upcoming primary care visit can increase influenza vaccination rates.
Design: Randomized, controlled trial.
Setting: Two health systems in the Northeastern US between September 2020 and... View Details
Design: Randomized, controlled trial.
Setting: Two health systems in the Northeastern US between September 2020 and... View Details