Publications

SSRN

Research Summary

Technology Adoption

Professor Ashraf's research in technology adoption addresses the puzzling question of why easy and accessible technology is not used, even when it has the potential to save lives or significantly increase income.

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2018
Article

Overcoming Barriers to Time-Saving: Reminders of Future Busyness Encourage Consumers to Buy Time

By: A. V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Michael I. Norton

Spending money on time-saving purchases improves happiness. Yet, people often fail to spend their money in this way. Because most people believe that the future will be less busy than the present, they may underweight the value of these purchases. We examine the impact... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Choice; Sharing Economy; Opportunity Cost; Time-as Money; Well-being; Time Management; Happiness; Perception; Behavior

Purchase

Article

Price and Quality Decisions by Self-Serving Managers

By: Marco Bertini, Daniel Halbheer and Oded Koenigsberg

We present a theory of price and quality decisions by managers who are self-serving. In the theory, firms stress the price or quality of their products, but not both. Accounting for this, managers exploit any uncertainty about the cause of market outcomes to credit... View Details

Keywords: Causal Reasoning; Self-serving Bias; Strategic Orientation; Managerial Decision-making; Price; Quality; Decision Making; Theory

September 2020
Article

Analyst Forecast Bundling

By: Michael Drake, Peter Joos, Joseph Pacelli and Brady Twedt

Changing economic conditions over the past two decades have created incentives for sell-side analysts to both provide their institutional clients tiered services and to streamline their written research process. One manifestation of these changes is an increased... View Details

Keywords: Analysts; Earnings Forecasts; Forecast Accuracy; Forecast Bundling; Business Earnings; Forecasting and Prediction

Register to Read

17 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 17

that impact perceptions of leadership. These observations suggest actionable opportunities to improve team leadership behavior. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52114 The Effects of Quota Frequency on Sales Force Performance: Evidence... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2012
Working Paper

Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity

By: Jooa Julia Lee, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

People believe that weather conditions influence their everyday work life, but to date, little is known about how weather affects individual productivity. Most people believe that bad weather conditions reduce productivity. In this research, we predict and find just... View Details

Keywords: Productivity; Opportunity Cost; Distractions; Weather; Performance Productivity; Social Psychology; Mathematical Methods

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream describes the needs of small businesses for capital and demonstrates how technology—novel data sources, artificial intelligence, machine learning—will transform the small business lending market. This market... View Details

Profile

Donna Khalife

Why was earning your MBA at HBS important to you? Earning my MBA at HBS was critical in giving me the right environment to explore my passions and gain new skills to pursue those passions whole-heartedly. How has your HBS experience... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment / Media; Entrepreneurship

December 2004 (Revised July 2005)
Case

Extend Fertility

By: Myra M. Hart and Sylvia Sensiper

Focuses on the search for opportunity, the generation and evaluation of business concepts, creation of a business plan, and the start-up process. Follows experienced entrepreneur Christy Jones as she combines her business skills and personal experience to generate new... View Details

Keywords: Opportunities; Business Plan; Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Social Issues; Gender; Business Startups; Biotechnology Industry

Educators

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

business owners to understand their own cash flow and prospects. Now the fintech innovation cycle is at an inflection point—new streams of data have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business’s finances. The playing... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

March 2015
Article

Vulnerable Banks

By: Robin Greenwood, Augustin Landier and David Thesmar

We present a model in which fire sales propagate shocks across bank balance sheets. When a bank experiences a negative shock to its equity, a natural way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. If potential buyers are limited, then asset sales depress prices,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Liquidity; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Europe

Research Summary

Personal Development and Interpersonal Feedback

Enabling individual development and learning are key to enabling organizational success as well as employee satisfaction and engagement. Many organizational approaches to employee development visualize feedback processes as mechanisms for illuminating individual... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Personal Development

Research Summary

Public Policy and Markets

By: Willis M. Emmons

William (Willis) M. Emmons III is investigating the interaction of public policy, markets, business strategy, and performance at the levels of firm, industry, and society. Emmons' approach draws heavily on economic theories of industrial organization, market failure,... View Details

2010
Chapter

A Resource Belief-Curse: Oil and Individualism

By: Rafael Di Tella, Juan Dubra and Robert MacCulloch

We study the correlation between a belief concerning individualism and a measure of luck in the US during the period 1983-2004. The measure of beliefs is the answer to a question related to whether the poor should be helped by the government or if they should help... View Details

Keywords: History; Natural Environment; Non-Renewable Energy; Values and Beliefs; Price; Poverty; Policy; Economy; United States

2013
Chapter

The Design of Online Advertising Markets

By: Benjamin Edelman

Because the market for online advertising is both new and fast-changing, participants experiment with all manner of variations. Should an advertiser's payment reflect the number of times an ad was shown, the number of times it was clicked, the number of sales that... View Details

Keywords: Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Online Advertising; Price; Market Design; Measurement and Metrics; Sales; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web

2007
Working Paper

The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence from the Software Industry

By: Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin

Much academic work asserts a relationship between the design of a complex system and the manner in which this system evolves over time. In particular, designs which are modular in nature are argued to be more "evolvable," in that these designs facilitate making... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Adaptation; Software; Information Technology Industry