Publications

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Article

Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Peter Maxted

Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement account (IRA)... View Details

Keywords: Present Bias; Procrastination; Personal Finance; Decision Making; Social Psychology; Retirement

2011
Article

Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation

By: Christopher Parsons, J. Sulaeman, M. Yates and D. Hamermesh

Major League Baseball umpires express their racial/ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers. Strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race/ethnicity, but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires. Pitchers understand the... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Prejudice and Bias; Ethnicity; Race; Performance Productivity; Sports; Sports Industry

17 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews

United States. Some of the resumes included information that clearly pointed out the applicants’ minority status, while others were whitened, or scrubbed of racial clues. The researchers then created email accounts and phone numbers for... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

12 Sep 2023
Book

Successful, But Still Feel Empty? A Happiness Scholar and Oprah Have Advice for You

according to one statistic stating that friendship accounts for about 60 percent of the difference in happiness between people. COVID-19 made socializing harder, layered on top of existing anxiety and... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

2011
Other Unpublished Work

What Do Private Firms Look Like?

By: John Asker, Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist

Private firms in the U.S. are not subject to public reporting requirements, so relatively little is known about their characteristics and behavior—until now. This Data Appendix describes a new database on private U.S. firms, created by Sageworks Inc. in cooperation... View Details

Keywords: Data and Data Sets; Behavior; Public Sector; Corporate Disclosure; Private Sector; Financial Statements; United States

SSRN

Article

MIT Roundtable on Corporate Risk Management

By: Robert C. Merton

Against the backdrop of financial crisis, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners discusses the contribution of financial management and innovation to corporate growth and value, along with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of such innovation.... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Market Participation; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Value; Distribution; Capital Structure; Risk Management; Business Ventures; Business Model; Strategy

Henry McGee joined the HBS faculty in 2013 after retiring as President of HBO Home Entertainment, the digital and DVD program distribution division of Home Box Office, the pioneering premium television company. A member of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit,... View Details

Keywords: television; motion pictures; media; e-commerce industry; entertainment; broadcasting; distribution; health care; journalism; wholesale; arts; nonprofit industry

14 Jul 2023
Blog Post

What You Can Do to Create an Anti-Racist Organization

taught that living in this world means you have a social responsibility for thinking about how you create more joy for people in this world.” After graduating from Duke University with a dual major in Dance and Sociology, and from Harvard... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

Rakesh Khurana

Rakesh Khurana is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is also Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard College, and the Danoff Dean of Harvard College.

Professor... View Details

Keywords: executive search

2014
Article

Models of Caring, or Acting as if One Cared, About the Welfare of Others

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper surveys the theoretical literature in which people are modeled as taking other people's payoffs into account either because this affects their utility directly or because they wish to impress others with their social-mindedness. Key experimental results that... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

May 23, 2011
Article

Leading and Lagging Countries in Contributing to a Sustainable Society

By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim

To determine the extent to which corporate and investor behavior is changing to contribute to a more sustainable society, researchers Robert Eccles and George Serafeim analyzed data involving over 2,000 companies in 23 countries. One result: a ranking of countries... View Details

Keywords: Change; Society; Corporate Disclosure; Natural Environment; Rank and Position; Social Issues; Financial Statements; Behavior

02 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: May 2, 2017

showing a passenger being dragged from a plane. Of all the U.S. air carriers, United should have known the power of social media and public outrage. It had learned years earlier in a prominent case about how fast viral content spreads and... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

08 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 8

decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence, especially across countries. This has limited the ability to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 2002
Case

Seattle Public Schools, 1995-2002 (B): The Performance Agenda

Describes the implementation in Seattle Public Schools, under the direction of Superintendent Joseph Olchefske, of a systemwide standards and accountability scheme, known as the Performance Agenda. The Performance Agenda set academic standards for students and defined... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Social Entrepreneurship; Education; Education Industry; Seattle

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Research Summary

Overview

My focus is empirical financial accounting research, with particular interests in governance, valuation, M&A, and short-sellers. All three of my papers to date fall under the broad heading of “alternative governance mechanisms”—studies of how accounting information is... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Law

Research Summary

Overview

My focus is empirical financial accounting research, with particular interests in governance, valuation, M&A, and short-sellers. All three of my papers to date fall under the broad heading of “alternative governance mechanisms”—studies of how accounting information is... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Law

05 Sep 2013
News

Women and Sustainable Investing

03 Nov 2015
First Look

November 3, 2015

employment regulation. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50041 November 2015 Accounting Review The Effect of Target Difficulty on Target Completion: The Case of Reducing Carbon Emissions By: Ioannou,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2020
Article

Tales of Two Motives: Disclosure and Concealment

By: Leslie John, Michael L. Slepian and Diana Tamir

We posit that the desire to disclose personal information, and the desire to conceal it, are related yet distinct psychological motives. People often wish to conceal information, such as embarrassing aspects of the self. Yet people also seek to reveal information, such... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; Privacy; Information; Motivation and Incentives