Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,823)
- Faculty Publications (677)
- 2012
- Working Paper
The Determinants of National Competitiveness
By: Mercedes Delgado, Christian Ketels, Michael E. Porter and Scott Stern
We define foundational competitiveness as the expected level of output per working-age individual that is supported by the overall quality of a country as a place to do business. The focus on output per potential worker, a broader measure of national productivity than... View Details
- July 2012
- Article
The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as... View Details
- 2012
- Article
Evidence for the Pinocchio Effect: Linguistic Differences Between Lies, Deception by Omissions, and Truths
By: Lyn M. Van Swol, Michael T. Braun and Deepak Malhotra
The study used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and Coh-Metrix software to examine linguistic differences with deception in an ultimatum game. In the game, the Allocator was given an amount of money to divide with the Receiver. The Receiver did not know the precise... View Details
- February 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
What's the Deal with LivingSocial?
By: Michael I. Norton, Luc Wathieu, Betsy Page Sigman and Marco Bertini
Tim O'Shaughnessy, the 29-year-old CEO of LivingSocial, is growing a revolutionary worldwide business of "daily deals"—in which retailers offer a heavily-discounted product or service available for purchase for brief (often 24-hour) windows. The case explores the... View Details
- February 2012 (Revised March 2014)
- Case
Sweet Deal—Industry Self-Regulation of Breakfast Cereal Advertising to Children
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis Yao, Britta Kelley and Lizzie Gomez
In response to growing concern about childhood obesity, in February 2006 the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) announced an initiative to examine its self-regulatory program on children's advertising. The existing program was a voluntary cross-industry program... View Details
- Article
Deception and Its Detection: Effects of Monetary Incentives and Personal Relationship History
By: Lyn M. Van Swol, Deepak Malhotra and Michael T. Braun
The study examined detection of deception in unsanctioned, consequential lies between either friends or strangers using an ultimatum game. The sender was given an amount of money to divide with the receiver. The receiver did not know the precise amount the sender had... View Details
- Article
Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion: Evidence for a Positive Feedback Loop between Prosocial Spending and Happiness
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Michael I. Norton
We examine whether a positive feedback loop exists between spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) and happiness. Participants recalled a previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward, participants... View Details
- Article
The Persuasive 'Power' of Stigma?
By: Michael I. Norton, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Dana R. Carney and Dan Ariely
We predicted that able-bodied individuals and white Americans would have a difficult time saying no to persuasive appeals offered by disabled individuals and black Americans, due to their desire to make such interactions proceed smoothly. In two experiments, we show... View Details
- December 2011
- Article
Data Impediments to Empirical Work on Health Insurance Markets
By: Leemore S. Dafny, David Dranove, Frank Limbrock and Fiona Scott Morton
We compare four datasets that researchers might use to study competition in the health insurance industry. We show that the two datasets most commonly used to estimate market concentration differ considerably from each other (both in levels and in changes over time),... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Span of Control and Span of Attention
By: Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat, Raffaella Sadun and Julie Wulf
Using novel data on CEO time use, we document the relationship between the size and composition of the executive team and the attention of the CEO. We combine information about CEO span of control for a sample of 65 companies with detailed data on how CEOs allocate... View Details
- Article
Stability and Competitive Equilibrium in Matching Markets with Transfers
By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
This note surveys recent work in generalized matching theory, focusing on trading networks with transferable utility. In trading networks with a finite set of contractual opportunities, the substitutability of agents’ preferences is essential for the guaranteed... View Details
Keywords: Matching; Networks; Joint Ventures; Stability; Competitive Equilibrium; Core; Efficiency; Economics; Theory
- November 2011 (Revised September 2012)
- Case
Underwater Engineer at Intel Corporation
Molly Miller, an Intel employee and shareholder, must decide whether to vote FOR or AGAINST Intel's proposed 2009 option exchange program. Given recent declines in Intel's stock price, more than 99% of Intel's outstanding employee stock options are "underwater," and... View Details
- Fall 2011
- Article
A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance
By: Gunnar Trumbull and Peter Tufano
In this brief history of U.S. consumer finance since World War II, the sector is defined based on the functions delivered by firms in the form of payments, savings and investing, borrowing, managing risk, and providing advice. Evidence of major trends in consumption,... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications
By: Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich and Michael I. Norton
Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory... View Details
Keywords: Wages; Surveys; Wealth and Poverty; Behavior; Income; Research; Rank and Position; Attitudes; Personal Characteristics; Economics
- June 28, 2011
- Article
Using Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates
By: Katherine L Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We evaluate the results of a field experiment designed to measure the effect of prompts to form implementation intentions on realized behavioral outcomes. The outcome of interest is influenza vaccination receipt at free on-site clinics offered by a large firm to its... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Can Nervous Nelly Negotiate? How Anxiety Causes Negotiators to Make Low First Offers, Exit Early, and Earn Less Profit
By: A.W. Brooks and M.E. Schweitzer
Negotiations trigger anxiety. Across four studies, we demonstrate that anxiety is harmful to negotiator performance. In our experiments, we induced either anxiety or neutral feelings and studied behavior in negotiation and continuous shrinking-pie tasks. Compared to... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Institutional Stock Trading on Loan Market Information
By: Victoria Ivashina and Zheng Sun
Over the past decade, one of the most important developments in the corporate loan market has been the increasing participation of institutional investors in lending syndicates. As lenders, institutional investors routinely receive private information about borrowers.... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Race at the Top: How Companies Shape the Inclusion of African Americans on Their Boards in Response to Institutional Pressures
By: Clayton S. Rose and William T. Bielby
Drawing on institutionalist theory, we conceptualize the racial composition of the boards of directors of large American companies as shaped in response to social and political norms. We use new longitudinal and cross-sectional data to test hypotheses about factors... View Details
- 2011
- Book
Success with Science: The Winners' Guide to High School Research
By: Shiv Gaglani, Maria Elena De Obaldia, Scott Duke Kominers, Dayan Li and Carol Y. Suh
Do you want to develop useful skills, gain admission to top colleges, win scholarship money, excel at science competitions, and explore career options all while having fun? By reading this book and using the advice within it, you will learn how to formulate a research... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Office of Technology Transfer - Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences
By: Willy Shih, Sen Chai, Kamen Bliznashki and Courtney Hyland
Gordon Zong is trying to teach Chinese universities and research institutes how to do effective technology transfer and IP licensing, but he is trying to do it in an environment with weak property rights and an underdeveloped support infrastructure. As the managing... View Details