Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(556)
- Faculty Publications (42)
- 2016
- Working Paper
Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests
Research has shown that women skip more questions than men on multiple-choice tests with penalties for wrong answers. We propose and test five policy changes aimed at eliminating this source of gender bias in test scores. Our data show that simply removing the penalty... View Details
- March 8, 2016
- Article
Cognitive Fatigue Influences Students' Performance on Standardized Tests
By: Hans Henrik Sievertsen, F. Gino and Marco Piovesan
Using test data for all children attending Danish public schools between school years 2009–2010 and 2012–2013, we examine how the time of the test affects performance. Test time is determined by the weekly class schedule and computer availability at the school. We find... View Details
- July 2015
- Article
Prosocial Norms in the Classroom: The Role of Self-regulation in Following Norms of Giving
By: P. R. Blake, M. Piovesan, N. Montinari, F. Werneken and F. Gino
Children who are prosocial in elementary school tend to have higher academic achievement and experience greater acceptance by their peers in adolescence. Despite this positive influence on educational outcomes, it is still unclear why some children are more prosocial... View Details
- December 2013 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Atlanta Schools: Measures to Improve Performance
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
The widespread cheating scandal that rocked the Atlanta public school system in 2010 and 2011 illustrates how high-stakes performance pressure, without sufficient risk controls, can drive dangerous behavior. After becoming superintendent of the low-income and... View Details
Keywords: Atlanta; Test; Testing; Standardized Test; Standardized Testing; No Child Left Behind; NCLB; Cheating; Performance Pressure; Measurement; Incentives; Atlanta Public Schools; Management; Leadership; Ethics; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Performance Expectations; Risk Management; Education; Education Industry; United States; Georgia (state, US); Atlanta
- September–October 2013
- Article
The Role of Organizational Scope and Governance in Strengthening Private Monitoring
By: Lamar Pierce and Michael W. Toffel
Governments and other organizations often outsource activities to achieve cost savings from market competition. Yet such benefits are often accompanied by poor quality resulting from moral hazard, which can be particularly onerous when outsourcing the monitoring and... View Details
Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Accountability; Governance Compliance; Policy; Management Practices and Processes; Demand and Consumers; Market Design; Market Entry and Exit; Market Transactions; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Business Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Expectations; Practice; Transportation; Transportation Industry; Service Industry; United States; New York (state, US)
- 2013
- Working Paper
Non-Standard Matches and Charitable Giving
By: Michael Sanders, Sarah Smith and Michael I. Norton
Many organisations, including corporations and governments, wish to encourage charitable giving, and offer incentives for their employees, customers and citizens to do so. The most common of these incentives is a match rate, where the organisation agrees to pay, for... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Do Strict Capital Requirements Raise the Cost of Capital? Banking Regulation and the Low Risk Anomaly
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
Minimum capital requirements are a central tool of banking regulation. Setting them balances a number of factors, including any effects on the cost of capital and in turn the rates available to borrowers. Standard theory predicts that, in perfect and efficient capital... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Online Word of Mouth and Product Review Disagreement
By: Frank Nagle and Christoph Riedl
Studies of online word of mouth have frequently posited―but never systematically conceptualized and explored―that the level of disagreement between existing product reviews can impact the volume and the valence of future reviews. In this study we develop a theoretical... View Details
- 2013
- Chapter
Capturing History: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927
By: David Moss and Jonathan Lackow
In the study of regulation (and political economy more generally), there is a danger that historical inferences from theory may infect historical tests of theory. It is imperative, therefore, that historical tests always involve a vigorous search not only for... View Details
- Spring 2013
- Article
Does Mandatory IFRS Adoption Improve the Information Environment?
By: Joanne Horton, George Serafeim and Ioanna Serafeim
We examine the effect of mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on firms' information environment. We find that after mandatory IFRS adoption, consensus forecast errors decrease for firms that mandatorily adopt IFRS relative to forecast... View Details
- Article
Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
By: Sergey Chernenko, C. Fritz Foley and Robin Greenwood
Standard theories of corporate ownership assume that because markets are efficient, insiders ultimately bear all agency costs that they create and therefore have a strong incentive to minimize conflicts of interest with outside investors. We argue that if equity is... View Details
- 2010
- Book
Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads
By: Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin and Patrick Cullen
"Business Schools Face Test of Faith." "Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?" As these headlines make clear, business education is at a major crossroads. For decades, MBA graduates from top-tier schools set the standard for cutting-edge business knowledge and skills. Now... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Happiness Adaptation to Income beyond 'Basic Needs'
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We test for whether, once "basic needs" are satisfied, there is happiness adaptation to further gains in income using three data sets. Individual German Panel Data from 1985 to 2000, and data on the well-being of over 600,000 people in a panel of European countries... View Details
- August 2009
- Article
Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer
By: John Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman
We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by comparing the purchases online grocery customers make when redeeming $10-off coupons with the purchases they make without coupons. Controlling for customer fixed effects and other variables, we... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Rethinking the Role of History in Law & Economics: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927
By: David A. Moss and Jonathan B. Lackow
In the study of law and economics, there is a danger that historical inferences from theory may infect historical tests of theory. It is imperative, therefore, that historical tests always involve a vigorous search not only for confirming evidence, but for... View Details
- July 2008
- Article
Fairness in Extended Dictator-Game Experiments
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Reiner Eichenberger
We test the robustness of behavior in dictator games by offering allocators the choice to play an unattractive lottery. With this lottery option, mean transfers from allocators to recipients substantially decline, partly because many allocators now keep the entire... View Details
- August 2007
- Article
Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India
By: A. Banerjee, Shawn A. Cole, E. Duflo and L. Linden
This paper presents the results of two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India. A remedial education program hired young women to teach students lagging behind in basic literacy and numeracy skills. It increased average test scores of all children in... View Details
- October 2006 (Revised August 2023)
- Background Note
Note on Student Outcomes in U.S. Public Education
By: Stacey M. Childress, Stig Leschly and John J-H Kim
Surveys educational outcomes among public school students in the United States. Educational outcomes are categorized as achievement outcomes (measured primarily by students' performance on standardized test results) and attainment outcomes (measured primarily by... View Details
- August 2005 (Revised December 2006)
- Case
Procter & Gamble: Electronic Data Capture and Clinical Trial Management
By: Robert S. Huckman and Mark J. Cotteleer
Considers whether the management of Procter & Gamble (P&G) Pharmaceuticals should adopt Web-based electronic data capture (EDC) as the default standard for the management of its clinical drug trials. Provides a detailed description of the existing paper-based process... View Details
- September 2004 (Revised January 2006)
- Tutorial
Introduction to Cost Accounting Systems
By: David F. Hawkins, V.G. Narayanan, Jacob Cohen and Michele Jurgens
Covers the basics of cost system design, demonstrating in a clear, step-by-step fashion how costs are assigned to cost objects. Key concepts include direct and indirect costs, two-stage allocation, cost pools, and cost drivers. Also provides a brief review of several... View Details