Publications

The period leading up to the Great Depression witnessed the rise of economic forecasters, pioneers who sought to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts. This book chronicles the lives and careers of the men who... View Details

Web

Program Requirements - Doctoral

Methods II (Economics 2115) Advanced Applied Econometrics (Economics 2144) Industrial Organization (Economics 2610) Statistical Methods for Evaluating Causal Effects (Econ 1127) Advanced Quantitative Methods II (KSG API 210i) Machine... 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

Purchase

2023
Working Paper

Nailing Prediction: Experimental Evidence on the Value of Tools in Predictive Model Development

By: Daniel Yue, Paul Hamilton and Iavor Bojinov

Predictive model development is understudied despite its centrality in modern artificial intelligence and machine learning business applications. Although prior discussions highlight advances in methods (along the dimensions of data, computing power, and algorithms)... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

2020
Working Paper

The Effects of Hierarchy on Learning and Performance in Business Experimentation

By: Sourobh Ghosh, Stefan Thomke and Hazjier Pourkhalkhali

Do senior managers help or hurt business experiments? Despite the widespread adoption of business experiments to guide strategic decision-making, we lack a scholarly understanding of what role senior managers play in firm experimentation. Using proprietary data of live... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; Innovation; Search; New Product Development; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Design; Learning; Performance

07 Jan 2019
News

Decreases In Readmissions Credited To Medicare’s Program To Reduce Hospital Readmissions Have Been Overstated

12 Mar 2019
HBS Seminar

Giorgos Zervas, Boston University

Nailing Prediction: Experimental Evidence on the Value of Tools in Predictive Model Development

Predictive model development is understudied despite its importance to modern businesses. Although prior discussions highlight advances in methods (along the dimensions of data, computing power, and algorithms) as the primary driver of model quality, the value of... View Details

August 2021
Article

Crowdsourcing Memories: Mixed Methods Research by Cultural Insiders-Epistemological Outsiders

By: Tarun Khanna, Karim R. Lakhani, Shubhangi Bhadada, Nabil Khan, Saba Kohli Davé, Rasim Alam and Meena Hewett

This paper examines the role that the two lead authors’ personal connections played in the research methodology and data collection for the Partition Stories Project—a mixed-methods approach to revisiting the much-studied historical trauma of the Partition of British... View Details

Keywords: Mixed Methods; Insider-outsiders; Myth Of Informed Objectivity; Hybrid Research; Oral Narratives; Research; Analysis; India

Purchase

2017
Working Paper

Salience through Information Technology: The Effect of Balance Availability on the Smoothing of SNAP Benefits

By: Andrew Hillis

Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) run out of most benefits before halfway through a benefit deposit cycle. I study the introduction of a mobile software application, Fresh EBT, that enables beneficiaries to check their available balance... View Details

Keywords: Mobile Technology; Welfare or Wellbeing; Technology Adoption; Behavior

2014
Teaching Note

Fine Harvest Restaurant Group

By: Clara X. Chen, Kenneth A. Merchant, Tatiana Sandino and Wim Van der Stede

The Fine Harvest Restaurant Group cases A and B examine a company's design of a new system to evaluate the performance (and determine the bonuses) for its restaurant managers. Fine Harvest had traditionally evaluated restaurant managers based on store margins and had... View Details

Keywords: Incentive Systems; Relative Performance Evaluation; Restaurant Industry; Accounting; Economics; Human Resources; Measurement and Metrics; Labor; Performance; Salesforce Management; Retail Industry; North and Central America

2025
Working Paper

Methane Abatement Costs in the Oil and Gas Industry: Survey and Synthesis

By: Joseph E. Aldy, Forest Reinhardt and Robert N. Stavins

There is growing recognition of the relative importance of anthropogenic emissions of methane as a contributor to global climate change. An important source of such emissions in some countries, including the United States, is the oil and gas (O&G) sector. This points... View Details

Keywords: Emission Reduction; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Pollutants; Energy Industry

Register to Read

Keywords: health care; insurance industry

03 Oct 2023
What Do You Think?

Do Leaders Learn More From Success or Failure?

associated with outstanding long-term performance. We asked hundreds of senior executives to name their competitor (not their own organization) with the strongest culture. We then compared those results with long-term (10-year) performance. The View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

23 Sep 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Applying Random Coefficient Models to Strategy Research: Testing for Firm Heterogeneity, Predicting Firm-Specific Coefficients, and Estimating Strategy Trade-Offs

Keywords: by Juan Alcácer, Wilbur Chung, Ashton Hawk & Gonçalo Pacheco-de-Almeida

September 2013
Article

Testimonials Do Not Convert Patients from Brand to Generic Medication

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Gwendolyn Reynolds

Objectives: To assess whether the addition of a peer testimonial to an informational mailing increases conversion rates from brand name prescription medications to lower-cost therapeutic equivalents, and whether the testimonial's efficacy increases when... View Details

Keywords: Testimonial; Peer Information; Social Proximity; Communication; Generic Medication; Familiarity; Marketing Communications; Decision Choices and Conditions; Identity; Health Care and Treatment; Marketing Reference Programs; Power and Influence; Brands and Branding; Health Industry

2023
Working Paper

Efficient Discovery of Heterogeneous Quantile Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments via Anomalous Pattern Detection

By: Edward McFowland III, Sriram Somanchi and Daniel B. Neill

In the recent literature on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects, each proposed method makes its own set of restrictive assumptions about the intervention’s effects and which subpopulations to explicitly estimate. Moreover, the majority of the literature provides... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Program Evaluation; Algorithms; Distributional Average Treatment Effect; Treatment Effect Subset Scan; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

2010
Chapter

From Visible Harm to Relative Risk: Centralization and Fragmentation of Pharmacovigilance

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich

Adverse drug reactions pose distinct but potentially catastrophic risks to patients, physicians, pharmaceutical firms, and regulators. Between the early 1960s and the present, national systems were built to collect, standardize, and respond to individual reports of... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Health Testing and Trials; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States