Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(460)
- Faculty Publications (159)
- December 2022
- Article
The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Ashley V. Whillans
Past studies show that spending money on other people—prosocial spending—increases a person’s happiness. However, foundational research on this topic was conducted prior to psychology’s credibility revolution (or “replication crisis”), so it is essential to ask... View Details
- November 2022
- Article
My Boss' Passion Matters as Much as My Own: The Interpersonal Dynamics of Passion Are a Critical Driver of Performance Evaluations
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Andreas Wihler and Adam D. Galinsky
Companies often celebrate employees who successfully pursue their passion. Academic research suggests that these positive evaluations occur because of the passion percolating inside the employee. We propose that supervisors are also a key piece of this puzzle:... View Details
- November 2022
- Article
The Psychosocial Value of Employment: Evidence from a Refugee Camp
By: Reshmaan Hussam, Erin M. Kelley, Gregory Lane and Fatima Zahra
Employment may be important to wellbeing for reasons beyond its role as an income source. This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in refugee camps in Bangladesh. We involve 745 individuals in a field experiment with three arms: a... View Details
- October–December 2022
- Article
Achieving Reliable Causal Inference with Data-Mined Variables: A Random Forest Approach to the Measurement Error Problem
By: Mochen Yang, Edward McFowland III, Gordon Burtch and Gediminas Adomavicius
Combining machine learning with econometric analysis is becoming increasingly prevalent in both research and practice. A common empirical strategy involves the application of predictive modeling techniques to "mine" variables of interest from available data, followed... View Details
- September 16, 2022
- Article
A Causal Test of the Strength of Weak Ties
By: Karthik Rajkumar, Guillaume Saint-Jacques, Iavor I. Bojinov, Erik Brynjolfsson and Sinan Aral
The authors analyzed data from multiple large-scale randomized experiments on LinkedIn’s People You May Know algorithm, which recommends new connections to LinkedIn members, to test the extent to which weak ties increased job mobility in the world’s largest... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Product2Vec: Leveraging Representation Learning to Model Consumer Product Choice in Large Assortments
By: Fanglin Chen, Xiao Liu, Davide Proserpio and Isamar Troncoso
We propose a method, Product2Vec, based on representation learning, that can automatically learn latent product attributes that drive consumer choices, to study product-level competition when the number of products is large. We demonstrate Product2Vec’s... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised January 2025)
- Technical Note
Causal Inference
This note provides an overview of causal inference for an introductory data science course. First, the note discusses observational studies and confounding variables. Next the note describes how randomized experiments can be used to account for the effect of... View Details
- June 2022
- Article
Conservatism Gets Funded? A Field Experiment on the Role of Negative Information in Novel Project Evaluation
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
The evaluation and selection of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet there are persistent concerns about bias, such as conservatism. This paper investigates the role that the format of evaluation, specifically information... View Details
- May 2022
- Article
Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts
By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and Peter Tufano
This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Causal Inference During A Pandemic: Evidence on the Effectiveness of Nebulized Ibuprofen as an Unproven Treatment for COVID-19 in Argentina
By: Sebastian Calonico, Rafael Di Tella and Juan Cruz Lopez Del Valle
Many medical decisions during the pandemic were made without the support of causal evidence obtained in clinical trials. We study the case of nebulized ibuprofen (NaIHS), a drug that was extensively used on COVID-19 patients in Argentina amidst wild claims about its... View Details
- Article
How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?
By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang
We explain when and how staggered difference-in-differences regression estimators, commonly applied to assess the impact of policy changes, are biased. These biases are likely to be relevant for a large portion of research settings in finance, accounting, and law that... View Details
- April–June 2022
- Other Article
Commentary on 'Causal Decision Making and Causal Effect Estimation Are Not the Same... and Why It Matters'
There has been a substantial discussion in various methodological and applied literatures around causal inference; especially in the use of machine learning and statistical models to understand heterogeneity in treatment effects and to make optimal decision... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Is Hybrid Work the Best of Both Worlds? Evidence from a Field Experiment
Hybrid work is emerging as a novel form of organizing work globally. This paper reports causal evidence on how the extent of hybrid work—the number of days worked from home relative to days worked from the office—affects work outcomes. Collaborating with an... View Details
- March 2022
- Article
Estimating the Effectiveness of Permanent Price Reductions for Competing Products Using Multivariate Bayesian Structural Time Series Models
By: Fiammetta Menchetti and Iavor Bojinov
Researchers regularly use synthetic control methods for estimating causal effects when a sub-set of units receive a single persistent treatment, and the rest are unaffected by the change. In many applications, however, units not assigned to treatment are nevertheless... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Fintech to the (Worker) Rescue: Access to Earned Wages, Financial Health and Employee Turnover
By: Jose Murillo, Boris Vallée and Dolly Yu
Using novel data from a Mexican FinTech firm, we study the usage by workers of earned wages access, an innovative financial service offered by firms to their employees as a benefit. We find usage to be significant and concentrated towards the end of the pay cycle. We... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Present Bias; Earned Wage Access; Wages; Employees; Retention; Well-being; Mexico
- March 2022
- Article
How Much Does Your Boss Make? The Effects of Salary Comparisons
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
The vast majority of the pay inequality in an organization comes from differences in pay between employees and their bosses. But are employees aware of these pay disparities? Are employees demotivated by this inequality? To address these questions, we conducted a... View Details
Keywords: Salary; Inequality; Managers; Career Concerns; Pay Transparency; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Perception; Behavior
- 2022
- Working Paper
Consumer Reviews and Regulation: Evidence from NYC Restaurants
By: Chiara Farronato and Georgios Zervas
We investigate the informativeness of hygiene signals in online reviews, and their effect on consumer choice and restaurant hygiene. We first extract signals of hygiene from Yelp. Among all dimensions that regulators monitor through mandated restaurant inspections, we... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Alleviating Time Poverty Among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment
By: A.V. Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal feld experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of... View Details
Keywords: Time; Subjective Well Being; Administrative Costs; Friction; Poverty; Well-being; Money; Perception; Kenya
- 2022
- Working Paper
Talent Flows and the Geography of Knowledge Production: Causal Evidence from Multinational Firms
By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sara Signorelli and James M. Sappenfield
Leveraging a unique dataset merging patent data with all work-related migration reforms that took place in 15 countries over 26 years, we show that reforms discouraging inventor mobility decrease the patenting of MNE subsidiaries within a country, while reforms... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Limits to Bank Deposit Market Power
By: Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford
Claims about the market power of bank deposits in the banking literature are numerous and far reaching. Recently, a causal narrative has emerged in the banking literature: market power in bank deposits, measured as imperfect pass-through of short-term market rates on... View Details