Publications

2015
Working Paper

Expertise vs. Bias in Evaluation: Evidence from the NIH

By: Danielle Li

Evaluators with expertise in a particular field may have an informational advantage in separating good projects from bad. At the same time, they may also have personal preferences that impact their objectivity. This paper develops a framework for separately identifying... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Performance Evaluation; Experience and Expertise

February 2014
Article

Governance and CEO Turnover: Do Something or Do the Right Thing?

By: Ray Fisman, Rakesh Khurana, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Soojin Yim

We study how corporate governance affects firm value through the decision of whether to fire or retain the CEO. We present a model in which weak governance—which prevents shareholders from controlling the board—protects inferior CEOs from dismissal, while at the same... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Value; Retention; Resignation and Termination; Corporate Governance; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations

2016
Chapter

User-Generated Content and Social Media

By: Michael Luca

This paper documents what economists have learned about user-generated content (UGC) and social media. A growing body of evidence suggests that UGC on platforms ranging from Yelp to Facebook has a large causal impact on economic and social outcomes ranging from... View Details

Keywords: User-generated Content; Crowdsourcing; Design Economics; Internet and the Web; Marketing; Economics; Media; Social Media

03 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Why Confronting Racism in AI 'Creates a Better Future for All of Us'

pretty bad. The present is better than 100 years ago and much better than 200 years ago. Today, the tech world is building AI systems and making decisions that will use human inferences and data built on the past. So instead of mimicking... View Details

Keywords: by Barbara DeLollis

December 2014
Article

Team Reflexivity as an Antidote to Team Information Processing Failures

By: M. C. Schippers, A. C. Edmondson and M. A. West

This article proposes that team reflexivity—a deliberate process of discussing team goals, processes, or outcomes—can function as an antidote to team-level biases and errors in decision making. We build on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing... View Details

Keywords: Team Reflexivity; Team Information-processesing Failures; Team Regulatory Processes; Team Learning; Groups and Teams; Knowledge Management

May 2016
Article

When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint Versus Separate Evaluation

By: Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen and Max Bazerman

We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an "evaluation nudge," in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Decision Choices and Conditions; Performance; Gender

2007
Chapter

Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey

By: Malcolm Baker, Richard Ruback and Jeffrey Wurgler

Research in behavioral corporate finance takes two distinct approaches. The first emphasizes that investors are less than fully rational. It views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational responses to securities market mispricing. The second approach... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Prejudice and Bias; Debt Securities; Financial Management; Price; Theory; Investment; Problems and Challenges; Behavioral Finance; Corporate Finance

Research Summary

Consumer Response to Online Ratings and Recommendations

Jolie is currently conducting several laboratory and field experiments to assess the tendency of individuals to employ predictable heuristics in complex information aggregation tasks, thus leading to search and choice behavior that is suboptimal relative to the fully... View Details

2023
Working Paper

How People Use Statistics

By: Pedro Bordalo, John J. Conlon, Nicola Gennaioli, Spencer Yongwook Kwon and Andrei Shleifer

We document two new facts about the distributions of answers in famous statistical problems: they are i) multi-modal and ii) unstable with respect to irrelevant changes in the problem. We offer a model in which, when solving a problem, people represent each hypothesis... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Microeconomics; Mathematical Methods; Behavioral Finance

January 2012 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA)'s Entry into the Retirement Market

By: Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy

This case examines Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA)'s decision to enter the retirement market with their new "Dimensional Managed DC" product, a complete retirement solution that aimed to provide investors with what they really wanted: the same standard of living in... View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Asset Management

Educators

17 Oct 2016
News

How to Hire with Algorithms

16 Oct 2019
Blog Post

6 Steps to Building a Better Workplace for Black Employees

To support black employees, business leaders must challenge biases and help employees be themselves, according to a new book co-edited by Anthony J. Mayo, Laura Morgan Roberts, and David A. Thomas. When Barack Obama was elected president... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

Sometimes, the loudest, most confident voice in the room might indeed be the best decision-maker. Other times, the person who understands that they don’t know the answer—and therefore holds back in a discussion—may be wiser. Whether groups and organizations reach good... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2012
Working Paper

When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint versus Separate Evaluation

By: Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen and Max H. Bazerman

We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an "evaluation nudge," in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Behavior; Groups and Teams; Decision Making; Performance Evaluation; Gender

March 2011 (Revised April 2011)
Exercise

The Future of BioPasteur

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Francesca Gino

The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias.... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Decision Choices and Conditions; Outcome or Result; Groups and Teams; Prejudice and Bias; Strategy

2014
Other Unpublished Work

Nudging Physicians to Pursue Careers in Underserved Areas: A Case for Behavioral Economics

By: Joseph Lopez, Mona Singh, Nava Ashraf and Joel Weissman

Currently, more than 60 million Americans live in "Health Professional Shortage Areas." Unless policymakers can encourage more physicians to practice in medically under-resourced areas, an increased number of uninsured individuals newly able to obtain health insurance... View Details

Keywords: Access To Care; Health Economics; Health Reform; Minority Health; Disparities; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

March 2011
Supplement

The Future of BioPasteur -- Supplement

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Francesca Gino

The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias.... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Problems and Challenges; Prejudice and Bias

March 2011
Supplement

BioPasteur: Instructions for the group discussion

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Francesca Gino

The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias.... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Groups and Teams; Prejudice and Bias; Strategy