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- 2024
- Working Paper
The New Digital Divide
By: Mayana Pereira, Shane Greenstein, Raffaella Sadun, Prasanna Tambe, Lucia Ronchi Darre, Tammy Glazer, Allen Kim, Rahul Dodhia and Juan Lavista Ferres
We build and analyze new metrics of digital usage that leverage telemetry data collected by Microsoft during operating system updates across forty million Windows devices in U.S. households. These measures of US household digital usage are much more comprehensive than... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Operational Impact of Customer Location in On-Demand Services
By: Natalie Epstein, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
The rapid growth of on-demand delivery services, particularly in the food and grocery sectors, has driven the expansion of hyperlocal fulfillment centers (FCs). This paper uses data from an on-demand grocery delivery platform in Latin America to assess how customer... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
Working Around the Clock: Temporal Distance, Intrafirm Communication, and Time Shifting of the Employee Workday
By: Jasmina Chauvin, Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tommy Pan Fang
This paper examines the effects of temporal distance generated by time zone separation on communication in geographically distributed organizations. We build on prior research, which highlights time zone separation as a significant challenge, but argue that employees... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Determinants of Top-Down Sabotage
By: Hashim Zaman and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate the conditions that motivate managers to impede the growth of talented subordinates due to fears of future competition for their own positions. Our research expands on existing tournament and contest theory literature that considers peer-to-peer sabotage... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
Sky Therapeutics: Innovating in Digital Therapeutics
By: Satish Tadikonda, Olivia Reszczynski and William Marks
Shad Faraz and Alex Youssef were intrigued by the opportunities in the relatively new area of Digital Therapeutics. Despite initial successes, early entrants had struggled with reimbursement and revenue-predictability challenges. However, venture investors still... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
How Real Is Hypothetical?: A High-Stakes Test of the Allais Paradox
By: Uri Gneezy, Yoram Halevy, Brian Hall, Theo Offerman and Jeroen van de Ven
Researchers in behavioral and experimental economics often argue that only
incentive-compatible mechanisms can elicit effort and truthful responses from participants.
Others argue that participants make less-biased decisions when the stakes
are sufficiently high.... View Details
- August 2024 (Revised August 2024)
- Background Note
Note on Adherence in Healthcare
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Zachery Page and Ben Creo
This note provides an overview of adherence in healthcare. It discusses systemwide costs of non-adherence, common barriers to adherence, relevant stakeholders, novel compliance tactics, and the impact on digital therapeutic adoption. It is recommended as a companion to... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Smaller than We Thought? The Effect of Automatic Savings Policies
By: James J. Choi, David Laibson, Jordan Cammarota, Richard Lombardo and John Beshears
Medium- and long-run dynamics undermine the effect of automatic enrollment and default savings-rate auto-escalation on retirement savings. Our analysis of 401(k) plans incorporates the facts that employees frequently leave firms (often before matching contributions... View Details
- July 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Dynamic Pricing at Wendy's: Where's the Beef?
By: Elie Ofek, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter
In early 2024, Wendy’s new CEO announced on an earnings call that the company would install digital menus in its US locations so it could begin testing dynamic pricing—changing prices up or down in response to shifts in supply and demand – as well as allow engaging in... View Details
- July 24, 2024
- Article
Research: How Passion Can Backfire at Work
By: Erica R. Bailey, Kai Krautter, Wen Wu, Adam D. Galinsky and Jon M. Jachimowicz
Passion has long been championed as a key to workplace success. However, scientific studies have found mixed results: On the one hand, some studies find evidence that passionate employees tend to perform better, while other research has documented null or even negative... View Details
- July 2024
- Case
“In That Crucible, You Find Innovation”: Public Safety Transformation in Albuquerque
By: Hise O. Gibson and Antonio Manuel Oftelie
“In That Crucible, You Find Innovation”: Public Safety Transformation in Albuquerque" centers on Mayor Tim Keller’s leadership during the social justice protests in 2020 and his efforts to reinvent Albuquerque’s public safety model. Faced with both a federal consent... View Details
- July 2024
- Article
A (Dynamic) Investigation of Stereotypes, Belief-Updating, and Behavior
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Paola Ugalde Araya and Basit Zafar
Many decisions—such as what educational or career path to pursue—are dynamic in nature, with individuals receiving feedback at one point in time and making decisions later. Using a controlled experiment, with two sessions one week apart, we analyze the dynamic effects... View Details
- July 2024
- Article
Chatbots and Mental Health: Insights into the Safety of Generative AI
By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni
Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers. Due to the ‘black box’ nature of the algorithms, it is impossible to predict in advance how these conversations will unfold. Behavioral research provides little insight into potential safety... View Details
- July–August 2024
- Article
Doing More with Less: Overcoming Ineffective Long-Term Targeting Using Short-Term Signals
By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza
Firms are increasingly interested in developing targeted interventions for customers with the best response,
which requires identifying differences in customer sensitivity, typically through the conditional average treatment
effect (CATE) estimation. In theory, to... View Details
- July 2024
- Article
How Artificial Intelligence Constrains Human Experience
By: A. Valenzuela, S. Puntoni, D. Hoffman, N. Castelo, J. De Freitas, B. Dietvorst, C. Hildebrand, Y.E. Huh, R. Meyer, M. Sweeney, S. Talaifar, G. Tomaino and K. Wertenbroch
Many consumption decisions and experiences are digitally mediated. As a consequence, consumer behavior is increasingly the joint product of human psychology and ubiquitous algorithms (Braun et al. 2024; cf. Melumad et al. 2020). The coming of age of Large Language... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Navigating Software Vulnerabilities: Eighteen Years of Evidence from Medium and Large U.S. Organizations
By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein
How prevalent are severe software vulnerabilities, how fast do software users respond to the availability of secure versions, and what determines the variance in the installation distribution? Using the largest dataset ever assembled on user updates, tracking server... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Webmunk: A New Tool for Studying Online Behavior and Digital Platforms
By: Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin and Chris Karr
Understanding the behavior of users online is important for researchers, policymakers, and private companies alike. But observing online behavior and conducting experiments is difficult without direct access to the user base and software of technology companies. We... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Makes Players Pay? An Empirical Investigation of In-Game Lotteries
By: Tomomichi Amano and Andrey Simonov
In 2020, gamers spent more than $15 billion on loot boxes, lotteries of virtual items in video
games. Paid loot boxes are contentious. Game producers argue that loot boxes complement
the gameplay and expenditures on loot boxes reflect players’ enjoyment of the game.... View Details
- June 2024
- Case
SnapTravel: Betting on 'Super.com'
By: Reza Satchu and Tom Quinn
This case explores SnapTravel, a travel startup offering discounted hotel rooms, and its founders’ desire to pivot to a “super app” that saved customers money across many different purchase types. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hussein Fazal and Henry Shi saw SnapTravel... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Plan; Business Startups; Change Management; Disruption; Transformation; Volatility; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Decisions; Income; Entrepreneurship; Geographic Scope; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Health Pandemics; Surveys; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Goals and Objectives; Risk Management; Consumer Behavior; Game Theory; Risk and Uncertainty; Adaptation; Diversification; Expansion; System Shocks; Accommodations Industry; Technology Industry; Canada; United States; Las Vegas
- June 2024
- Article
Defining Who You Are by Whom You Serve? Strategies for Prosocial–Professional Identity Integration with Clients
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Julie Yen
Many professionals want to both achieve professional success and contribute to society. Yet, in some professional contexts, these aims are in tension because serving elite clients is considered the pinnacle of professional success, but professionals themselves may view... View Details