Publications

SSRN

Article

Repairing the Damage: The Effect of Price Knowledge and Gender on Auto-Repair Price Quotes

By: Meghan Busse, Ayelet Israeli and Florian Zettelmeyer

In this paper we investigate whether sellers treat consumers differently on the basis of how well informed consumers appear to be. We implement a large-scale field experiment in which callers request price quotes from automotive repair shops. We show that sellers alter... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Price Discrimination; Automobiles; Field Experiment; Information; Fairness; Price; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Internet and the Web; Gender; Service Industry; Auto Industry

Purchase

June 2013
Article

What Is Privacy Worth?

By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein

Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Rights; Valuation; Ethics; Identity

December 2010
Article

Altruistic Dynamic Pricing with Customer Regret

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A model is considered where firms internalize the regret costs that consumers experience when they see an unexpected price change. Regret costs are assumed to be increasing in the size of price changes and this can explain why the size of price increases is less... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Price; Change; Inflation and Deflation; Cost Management; Customers; Practice; Announcements; Forecasting and Prediction

2009
Working Paper

Altruistic Dynamic Pricing with Customer Regret

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A model is considered where firms internalize the regret costs that consumers experience when they see an unexpected price change. Regret costs are assumed to be increasing in the size of price changes and this can explain why the size of price increases is less... View Details

Keywords: Inflation and Deflation; Price; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Mathematical Methods

01 Apr 2014
News

‘Management by Walking Around’ programs in hospitals may do more harm than good

Research Summary

Economic Catastrophe Bonds

(with Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford)

The central insight of asset pricing is that a security's value depends on both its distribution of payoffs across economic states and state prices. In fixed income markets, many investors focus exclusively on estimates of... View Details

Research Summary

Price as a Stimulus to Think: The Case for Willful Overpricing

Consumers aware of a new benefit will often experience uncertainty about its personal relevance or usage value. This paper shows that the decision to deliberate further to resolve this uncertainty and reach a polarized judgment of personal relevance critically depends... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Omnia Juncta in Uno: Foreign Powers and Trademark Protection in Shanghai's Concession Era

By: Laura Alfaro, Cathy Bao, Maggie X. Chen, Junjie Hong and Claudia Steinwender

We investigate how firms and markets adapt to trademark protection, an extensively utilized but under-examined form of IP protection to address asymmetric information, by exploring a historical precedent: China’s 1923 trademark law. Exploiting unique, newly digitized... View Details

Keywords: Trademark; Firm Dynamics; Intermediaries; Intellectual Property Institutions; Trademarks; Intellectual Property; Laws and Statutes; Outcome or Result; Organizational Change and Adaptation; China

SSRN

Article

Cheating, Inequality Aversion, and Appealing to Social Norms

By: Clara Amato, Francesca Gino, Natalia Montinari and Pierluigi Sacco

We conduct a field experiment involving 143, 9-years old children in their classrooms. Children are requested to flip a coin in private and receive a big or a small prize depending on the outcome they report. Comparing the actual and theoretical distribution of... View Details

Keywords: Cheating; Inequality Aversion; Social Norms; Children; Experiment; Behavior; Equality and Inequality; Moral Sensibility

Article

Measuring Audit Quality

By: Shivaram Rajgopal, Suraj Srinivasan and Xin Zheng

In this paper, we document 45 specific allegations related to audit deficiencies based on GAAS, as detailed in 141 AAERs and 153 securities class action lawsuits over the violation years 1978–2016. Next, we use these allegations to validate existing popular proxies of... View Details

Keywords: Audit Quality; Audit Deficiency; AAER; Securities Class Action Lawsuits; Enforcement; Accounting Audits; Quality; Measurement and Metrics

SSRN

April 2018
Case

Wilderness Safaris: Ecotourism Entrepreneurship

By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

Wilderness Safaris sees itself as a conservation company that is built on a business model of providing high-end, premium-priced wildlife safaris in various locations in Africa. Dependent on functioning, healthy ecosystems for its long-term survivability as a business,... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Conservation Planning; Corporate Social Responsibility; Ecotourism; Strategy; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Tourism Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Travel Industry; Africa; Botswana

Educators

Purchase

08 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 8, 2007

firms will have a new CEO within the next four years; your company could very well be next. Senior executives know that a CEO transition means they're in for a round of firings, organizational reshuffles, and other unwelcome career changes. When your career suddenly... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 9, 2024
Article

Addressing Climate Change with Behavioral Science: A Global Intervention Tournament in 63 Countries

By: Madalina Vlasceanu, Kimberly C. Doell, Joseph B. Bak-Coleman, Boryana Todorova, Michael M. Berkebile-Weinberg, Amit Goldenberg, Eric Shuman and et al.

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Policy; Knowledge Sharing; Values and Beliefs

June 2012
Article

A Reexamination of Tunneling and Business Groups: New Data and New Methods

By: Jordan I. Siegel and Prithwiraj Choudhury

One of the most rigorous methodologies in the corporate governance literature uses firms' reactions to industry shocks to characterize the quality of governance. This methodology can produce the wrong answer unless one considers the ways firms compete. Because... View Details

Keywords: Governance; System Shocks; India

May 2012
Article

To Zap or Not to Zap: How to Insert the Brand in TV Commercials to Minimize Avoidance

By: Thales S. Teixeira, Michel Wedel and Rik Pieters

Huge amounts of money are spent on TV advertising. In an environment of rising per-viewer rates for advertisers and increased skipping past ads by consumers, it is necessary for advertising managers to understand the determinants of commercial avoidance. In order to... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Television Entertainment; Advertising; Decisions

2010
Working Paper

Multinational Strategies and Developing Countries in Historical Perspective

By: Geoffrey Jones

This working paper offers a longitudinal and descriptive analysis of the strategies of multinationals from developed countries in developing countries. The central argument is that strategies were shaped by the trade-off between opportunity and risk. Three broad... View Details

Keywords: History; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Business and Government Relations