Publications

2008
Other Unpublished Work

The Paranoid Style in the Study of American Politics

By: David Moss and Mary Oey

The conventional view is that political actors, like economic actors, pursue their self interest, and that special interest groups dominate the policy making process by satisfying policy makers' need for money and other forms of political support. Indeed, many... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Government Legislation; Media; Interests; Power and Influence; Public Opinion; United States

Research Summary

The Corporate Governance Role of Taxes

Dyck introduces evidence that private benefits of control are higher in countries with poor tax enforcement and in ongoing work explores further this correlation using both theory and empirical work from the United States and Russia. This work illustrates that the... View Details

April 2021
Article

The Effects of Quota Frequency: Sales Performance and Product Focus

By: Doug J. Chung, Das Narayandas and Dongkyu Chang

This study investigates the comprehensive and multidimensional effects of quota (goal) frequency on sales force performance. We develop a theory of salespeople’s behavior—aggregate effort and the product type focus—in response to the temporal length of a sales-quota... View Details

Keywords: Sales Force Compensation; Field Experiment; Quotas; Quota Frequency; Commissions; Bonuses; Goals; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Goals and Objectives; Behavior; Performance

This study investigates the comprehensive and multidimensional effects of quota (goal) frequency on sales force performance. The study provides a theory of salespeople’s behavior—aggregate effort and the product type focus—in response to the temporal length of a... View Details

07 Dec 2018
Video

Current Events Through the Lens of Theory: Tesla's Debt Downgraded

Article

The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership

By: Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine

Agency theory, a new model of governance promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards shareholders as owners of... View Details

Keywords: Agency Theory; Business and Shareholder Relations; Leadership; Corporate Governance

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January 2025
Case

Arsenal Capital Partners' Refinancing of Pinnacle

By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu

Arsenal Capital Partners’ portfolio company, Pinnacle, a leading producer of high-performance adhesive technologies, has experienced rapid growth under Arsenal’s ownership. Over just two years, Pinnacle's EBITDA increased from $13.5 million to $60 million. By mid-2021,... View Details

Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Decision Choices and Conditions; Private Equity; Financing and Loans; Growth Management

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December 2020
Article

The Parable of the Auctioneer: Complexity in Paul R. Milgrom's Discovering Prices

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Teytelboym

Designing marketplaces in complex settings requires both novel economic theory and real-world engineering, often drawing upon ideas from fields such as computer science and operations research. In Discovering Prices, Milgrom (2017) explains the theory and design... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Design; Auctions; Market Design; Complexity

15 Dec 2023
News

The Musts of 2023

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck. At fall reunions, we set up shop on campus and asked alumni about what media moved them this year. What changed their minds or their hearts. And their answers ran... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

By: Roberto Verganti, Luca Vendraminelli and Marco Iansiti

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is affecting the scenario in which innovation takes place. What are the implications for our understanding of design? Is AI just another digital technology that, akin to many others, will not significantly question what we know about... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Design Thinking; Technological Innovation; Design; Change; Theory; AI and Machine Learning

Article

Strategic Management of Product Recovery

By: Michael W. Toffel

Manufacturers of an expanding range of durable products are facing regulatory and market pressures to manage the products they manufactured upon their end of life (EOL). In part, this attention is motivated by a growing number of countries—especially across Europe and... View Details

Keywords: Product; Environmental Sustainability; Cost Management; Government Legislation; Logistics; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy; Europe; Asia; United States

December 2010
Article

Implications for GAAP from an Analysis of Positive Research in Accounting

By: S.P. Kothari, Karthik Ramanna and Douglas J. Skinner

Based on extant literature, we review the positive theory of GAAP. The theory predicts that GAAP's principal focus is on control (performance measurement and stewardship) and that verifiability and conservatism are critical features of a GAAP shaped by market forces.... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Standards; International Accounting; Financial Markets; Financial Reporting

SSRN

October 2014 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Europe, Russia, and the Age of Gas Revolution

By: Rawi Abdelal, Leonardo Maugeri and Sogomon Tarontsi

The 2014 Ukraine crisis once again exposed the mutually limiting knot—a web of commercial relationships and oil and gas pipelines—that historically tied the European Union and Russia closely. In this crisis, a familiar conundrum preoccupied minds in the corridors of... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Business and Government Relations; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; European Union; Russia; Ukraine

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Fall 2013
Article

In Strange Company: The Puzzle of Private Investment in State-Controlled Firms

By: Mariana Pargendler, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G. Lazzarini

A large legal and economic literature describes how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) suffer from a variety of agency and political problems. Less theory and evidence, however, have been generated about the reasons why state-owned enterprises listed in stock markets... View Details

Keywords: State-owned Enterprises; Oil Companies; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; Brazil; Mexico; Norway

SSRN

October 2007
Article

The Art of Designing Markets

By: Alvin E. Roth

Traditionally, markets have been viewed as simply the confluence of supply and demand. But to function properly, they must be able to attract a sufficient number of buyers and sellers, induce participants to make their preferences clear, and overcome congestion by... View Details

Keywords: Market Design; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Information Technology; Internet and the Web

Forthcoming
Article

Measurement and Effects of Bank Exit Policies

By: Daniel Green and Boris Vallée

We study whether exit policies by financial institutions have financial and real consequences on the firms they target, using bank coal exit policies as a laboratory. In contrast to theories assuming high capital substitutability, we find large effects of these... View Details

Keywords: Coal Power; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Policy; Energy Industry

July 2021
Article

Discovering Auctions: Contributions of Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson

By: Alex Teytelboym, Shengwu Li, Scott Duke Kominers, Mohammad Akbarpour and Piotr Dworczak

The 2020 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson for “improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.” In this survey article, we review the contributions of the... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Auctions; Theory; Design