Publications

March 2015
Article

Signaling to Partially Informed Investors in the Newsvendor Model

By: William Schmidt, Vishal Gaur, Richard Lai and Ananth Raman

We investigate a puzzling phenomenon in which firms make investment decisions that purposefully do not maximize expected profits. Using an extension to the newsvendor model, we focus on a relatively common scenario in which the firm's investor has imperfect information... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment

November 2009
Article

Telegraphs—Shrinking Economic Distances? A Preliminary Enquiry, 1870s-1912

By: Felipe Tamega Fernandes

This is a very preliminary report on sources and data for my research on telegraphs. Telegraphs are usually analysed in the context of railway expansion and the literature has somewhat neglected the role of telegraphic communication for the development of steamship... View Details

Keywords: Economic History; Communication Technology; Rail Transportation; Ship Transportation; Telecommunications Industry

2009
Working Paper

Technology Innovation and Diffusion as Sources of Output and Asset Price Fluctuations

By: Diego A. Comin, Mark Gertler and Ana Maria Santacreu

We develop a model in which innovations in an economy's growth potential are an important driving force of the business cycle. The framework shares the emphasis of the recent "new shock" literature on revisions of beliefs about the future as a source of fluctuations,... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Economic Growth; Asset Pricing; Technological Innovation; Mathematical Methods; System Shocks; Technology Adoption

April 2006
Module Note

Cross-Border Financial Opportunities

By: Mihir A. Desai and Kathleen Luchs

Describes the fifth module in the International Finance course at Harvard Business School. This module explores how segmented capital markets create financing opportunities for firms and the mechanisms that evolve to take advantage of those opportunities. The issues... View Details

Keywords: Opportunities; Capital Markets; Decisions; International Finance; Motivation and Incentives; Taxation

Purchase

Research Summary

Overview

A growing body of strategy and management literature emphasizes the importance of non-market strategy, not only as a stand-alone strategy but also as a part of integrated strategy in dealing with frequent regulatory change and political/regulatory actors and agencies.... View Details

Keywords: Non-market Strategy; Lobbying; Business ＆ Government Relations; Global Strategy; Institutions

Research Summary

Bargaining with Imperfect Enforcement

Joint work with Mark Williams, formerly of Exeter College, Oxford.

The game-theoretic bargaining literature insists on non-cooperative bargaining procedure but allows cooperative implementation of agreements. The effect of this is to allow free-reign of bargaining... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Moral Incoherence During Category Emergence: The Contentious Case of Connected Toys

By: Ryann Noe

Through a longitudinal study of the emergence of connected toys – physical toys that interact with digital devices – I build theory about moral incoherence: when competing views about the moral worth of a category persist over time. During the course of their... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Moral Sensibility; Market Entry and Exit; Consumer Behavior

2023
Working Paper

The Politics of Philanthropy in China

By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu

This working paper looks historically at business philanthropy in China. In the West, the literature has distinguished between entrepreneurial and customary philanthropy, while the phenomenon of spiritual philanthropy has been identified in many emerging markets. This... View Details

Keywords: China; Philanthropy; Ethics; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Moral Sensibility; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Economic Systems; Economic Sectors; China

August 2022
Article

What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh and Kannan Srinivasan

We study how Airbnb property demand changed after the acquisition of verified images (taken by Airbnb’s photographers) and explore what makes a good image for an Airbnb property. Using deep learning and difference-in-difference analyses on an Airbnb panel dataset... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Property Demand; Computer Vision; Deep Learning; Image Feature Extraction; Content Engineering; Property; Marketing; Demand and Consumers

SSRN

Article

The Importance of Being Causal

By: Iavor I Bojinov, Albert Chen and Min Liu

Causal inference is the study of how actions, interventions, or treatments affect outcomes of interest. The methods that have received the lion’s share of attention in the data science literature for establishing causation are variations of randomized experiments.... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Observational Studies; Cross-sectional Studies; Panel Studies; Interrupted Time-series; Instrumental Variables

Article

A Fair Game? Racial Bias and Repeated Interaction between NBA Coaches and Players

By: Letian Zhang

There is strong evidence of racial bias in organizations but little understanding of how it changes with repeated interaction. This study proposes that repeated interaction has the potential to reduce racial bias, but its moderating effects are limited to the treatment... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Bias; Interaction; NBA; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Equality and Inequality; Interpersonal Communication; Sports

2014
Chapter

Payout Policy

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, Roni Michaely and Martin Schmalz

We survey the literature on payout policy, with a particular emphasis on developments in the last two decades. Of the traditional motives of why firms pay out (agency, signaling, and taxes), the cross-sectional empirical evidence is most persuasive in favor of agency... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Investment; Financial Services Industry

SSRN

2014
Working Paper

Institutional Strategies in Emerging Markets

By: Christopher Marquis and Mia Raynard

We review and integrate a wide range of literature that has examined the strategies by which organizations navigate institutionally diverse settings and capture rents outside of the marketplace. We synthesize this body of research under the umbrella term... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Organizations; Emerging Markets

SSRN

June 2013
Background Note

Venture Philanthropy: Its Evolution and Its Future

By: Allen Grossman, Sarah Appleby and Caitlin Reimers

This note explores the current state of venture philanthropy in the U.S. and its future. Based on interviews with 28 practitioners in the field of philanthropy and a review of the literature since the publication of the article introducing the concept of venture... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Nonprofit; Social Institutions; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Civil Society or Community; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States

Educators

Purchase

2009
Other Unpublished Work

When Weak Ties and Social Alternatives Benefit Organizational Commitment: Evidence from Wikipedia

This study examines the social mechanisms reinforcing participant commitment to collaborative work. Previous literature largely fails to acknowledge the wider context of individual workplace commitments, or suggests that multiple concurrent work and life commitments... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks

March 2006
Module Note

Financing Decisions within the Firm

By: Mihir A. Desai and Kathleen Luchs

Describes a core module in the International Finance course at Harvard Business School. The module focuses on the financial and managerial issues that confront managers who make financial decisions within multinational firms: how subsidiaries should be financed and... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; International Finance; Taxation; Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Framework; Performance Evaluation; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques