Publications

2025
Working Paper

The Hidden Costs of Working Multiple Jobs: Implications for Spending Behavior and Wellbeing

By: Paige Tsai and Ryan W. Buell

Problem definition: Amidst inflation, rising costs of living, an explosion in remote and gig working opportunities, and an increase in the part-time labor mix in economies around the world, it is becoming evermore commonplace for people to earn labor income... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Operations; Employee Behavior; Job Design and Levels; Personal Finance; Well-being; Happiness; Satisfaction; Wages

SSRN

12 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 12, 2019

emergent machine of the sovereign state. Yet such strategic interaction rarely yielded a decisive victory for either the secular state or for religion. By tracing how state-builders engaged religious institutions, elites, and attachments,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

30 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 30, 2018

Developing Theory Using Machine Learning Methods By: Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Ryan Allen, and Michael G. Endres Abstract—We describe how to employ machine learning (ML) methods in theory development. Compared to traditional causal inference... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2012
Other Unpublished Work

Measuring the Broadband Bonus in 20 OECD Countries

By: Shane Greenstein and Ryan McDevitt

This paper provides estimates of the economic value created by broadband Internet using measures of new gross domestic product and consumer surplus. The study finds that the economic value created in 30 OECD countries correlates roughly with the overall size of their... View Details

March 2012 (Revised September 2012)
Case

INRIX

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Ryan Johnson

Since its founding in 2004, INRIX, a leading global provider of traffic information and driver services, had received four rounds of financing from leading venture capital (VC) firms and by 2012 had been cash flow positive for the past six quarters. Its founder, Bryan... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Startups; Organizational Structure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry; Washington (state, US)

Educators

2022
Working Paper

Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

The influence of behavioral biases on aggregate outcomes like prices and allocations depends in part on self-selection: whether rational people opt more strongly into aggregate interactions than biased individuals. We conduct a series of betting market, auction and... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Cognition and Thinking; Markets; Price

December 2015
Case

IDEO: Human-Centered Service Design

By: Ryan W. Buell and Andrew Otazo

The case describes IDEO, one of the world's leading design firms, and its human-centered innovation culture and processes. It is an example of what managers can do to make their own organizations more innovative. In reaction to a rapidly changing competitive landscape,... View Details

Keywords: Design Thinking; Innovation; Service Management; Service; Design; Service Delivery; Innovation and Management; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Peru

Educators

March 2018
Supplement

Improving Access at VA

By: Ryan W. Buell and Robert S. Huckman

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Social Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Performance Improvement; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

Fourth Quarter 2017
Article

Optimal Tilts: Combining Persistent Characteristic Portfolios

By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Terry Burnham

We examine the optimal weighting of four tilts in U.S. equity markets from 1968 through 2014. We define a “tilt” as a characteristic-based portfolio strategy that requires relatively low annual turnover. This is a continuum, with small size (a very persistent... View Details

Keywords: Risk Anomaly; Beta; Capital Asset Pricing Model; Factor Investing

April 2024
Article

Detecting Routines: Applications to Ridesharing CRM

By: Ryan Dew, Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Nachum Sicherman

Routines shape many aspects of day-to-day consumption. While prior work has established the importance of habits in consumer behavior, little work has been done to understand the implications of routines—which we define as repeated behaviors with recurring, temporal... View Details

Keywords: Ride-sharing; Routine; Machine Learning; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Segmentation

14 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 14, 2017

experts to discuss how researchers can impact a broader audience, by lending their scientific expertise to pressing social issues, current events, and public debates. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2016
Article

Buying to Blunt Negative Feelings: Materialistic Escape from the Self

By: Grant Edward Donnelly, Masha Ksendzova, Ryan Howell, Kathleen Vohs and Roy F. Baumeister

We propose that escape theory, which describes how individuals seek to free themselves from aversive states of self-awareness, helps explain key patterns of materialistic people’s behavior. As predicted by escape theory, materialistic individuals may feel dissatisfied... View Details

Keywords: Materialism; Escape; Self; Negative Emotions; Self-awareness; Emotions; Consumer Behavior; Identity; Motivation and Incentives

25 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 25, 2018

operations. Product failures are, therefore, likely to impact firms’ subsequent innovation activities. Using 13 years of Food and Drug Administration data, we examine the effects of firm and competitor medical device recalls on subsequent new product innovation.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

13 Nov 2020
News

A Passion for Education

Bob Ryan (MBA 1970) Bob Ryan (MBA 1970), the first in his family to attend college, has come a long way from his Detroit roots. When the former chief financial officer (CFO) of Medtronic set up a fellowship... View Details

25 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 25

of tomorrow's innovative new products, arguing that companies must reinvest in new product and process development in the U.S. industrial sector. Only by reviving this "industrial commons" can the world's largest economy build... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2016 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Improving Access at VA

By: Ryan W. Buell, Robert S. Huckman and Sam Travers

In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Social Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Performance Improvement; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

Educators

2019
Working Paper

The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance

By: Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Compatibility; Satisfaction; Profitability; Customer Relationship Management; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Retail Industry

SSRN

2016
Article

Does volunteering improve well-being?

By: A.V. Whillans, Scott C. Seider, Lihan Chen, Ryan J. Dwyer, Sarah Novick, Kathryn J. Gramigna, Brittany A. Mitchell, Victoria Savalei, Sally S. Dickerson and Elizabeth W. Dunn

Does volunteering causally improve well-being? To empirically test this question, we examined one instantiation of volunteering that is common at post-secondary institutions across North America: community service learning (CSL). CSL is a form of experiential learning... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; College Students; Bayesian Statistics; Education; Well-being

2017
Working Paper

Optimal Tilts: Combining Persistent Characteristic Portfolios

By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Terry Burnham

We examine the optimal weighting of four tilts in US equity markets from 1968 through 2014. We define a “tilt” as a characteristic-based portfolio strategy that requires relatively low annual turnover. This is a continuum, with small size, a very persistent... View Details

Keywords: Risk Anomaly; Beta; Capital Asset Pricing Model; Factor Investing