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- Faculty Publications (143)
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- All HBS Web (646)
- Faculty Publications (143)
- Article
Excusing Selfishness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk
By: Christine L. Exley
Decisions involving charitable giving often occur under the shadow of risk. A common finding is that potential donors give less when there is greater risk that their donation will have less impact. While this behavior could be fully rationalized by standard economic... View Details
Keywords: Charitable Giving; Prosocial Behavior; Altruism; Risk Preferences; Risk and Uncertainty; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Behavior
Exley, Christine L. "Excusing Selfishness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk." Review of Economic Studies 83, no. 2 (April 2016): 587–628.
- Article
Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance
By: George Loewenstein, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List and Kevin G. Volpp
We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured... View Details
Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Simplification; Insurance; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Cognition and Thinking; Insurance Industry; Health Industry; United States
Loewenstein, George, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List, and Kevin G. Volpp. "Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance." Journal of Health Economics 32, no. 5 (September 2013): 850–862.
- Article
Business Investment in Education in Emerging Markets Since the 1960s
By: Valeria Giacomin, Geoffrey Jones and Erica Salvaj
This article examines non-profit investments by business in education in emerging markets between the 1960s and the present day. Using a sample of 110 interviews with business leaders from an oral history database, the study shows that more than three-quarters of such... View Details
Keywords: Economic History; Oral History; Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business History; Emerging Markets; Reputation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Education Industry; Africa; Asia; Latin America; Middle East; India; Chile; Colombia; Sri Lanka; Kenya
Giacomin, Valeria, Geoffrey Jones, and Erica Salvaj. "Business Investment in Education in Emerging Markets Since the 1960s." Business History 63, no. 7 (September 2021): 1113–1143.
- 2015
- Working Paper
Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration
By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit and William Kerr
The propagation of macroeconomic shocks through input-output and geographic networks can be a powerful driver of macroeconomic fluctuations. We first exposit that in the presence of Cobb-Douglas production functions and consumer preferences there is a specific pattern... View Details
Keywords: Economic Fluctuations; Geographic Collocation; Input-output Linkages; Propagation; Shocks; Networks; Fluctuation; System Shocks; Macroeconomics
Acemoglu, Daron, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr. "Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-006, July 2015.
- September 2009
- Article
Finance and Politics: A Review Essay Based on Kenneth Dam's Analysis of Legal Traditions in The Law-Growth Nexus
By: Mark J. Roe and Jordan I. Siegel
Strong financial markets are widely thought to propel economic development, with many in finance seeing legal tradition as fundamental to protecting investors sufficiently for finance to flourish. Kenneth Dam finds that the legal tradition view inaccurately portrays... View Details
Keywords: Financial Development; Economic Development; Kenneth Dam; Finance; Government and Politics; Information; Law
Roe, Mark J., and Jordan I. Siegel. "Finance and Politics: A Review Essay Based on Kenneth Dam's Analysis of Legal Traditions in The Law-Growth Nexus." Journal of Economic Literature 47, no. 3 (September 2009): 781–800. (Strong financial markets are widely thought to propel economic development, with many in finance seeing legal tradition as fundamental to protecting investors sufficiently for finance to flourish. Kenneth Dam finds that the legal tradition view inaccurately portrays how legal systems work, how laws developed historically, and how government power is allocated in the various legal traditions. Yet, after probing the legal origins' literature for inaccuracies, Dam does not deeply develop an alternative hypothesis to explain the world's differences in financial development. Nor does he challenge the origins core data, which could be origins' trump card. Hence, his analysis will not convince many economists, despite that his legal learning suggests conceptual and factual difficulties for the legal origins explanations. Yet, a dense political economy explanation is already out there and the origins-based data has unexplored weaknesses consistent with Dam's contentions. Knowing if the origins view is truly fundamental, flawed, or secondary is vital for financial development policy making because policymakers who believe it will pick policies that imitate what they think to be the core institutions of the preferred legal tradition. But if they have mistaken views, as Dam indicates they might, as to what the legal traditions' institutions really are and which types of laws are effective, or what is really most important to financial development, they will make policy mistakes—potentially serious ones.)
- November 2012
- Case
The World Bank in 2012: Choosing a Leader
By: Lakshmi Iyer and Ian McKown Cornell
In 2012, the World Bank faced important questions in terms of its future strategy and mission. Should the Bank continue to focus on micro-level development initiatives, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), or return to traditional macro-level financial... View Details
Keywords: Economic Development; Millennium Development Goals; World Bank; International Institutions; Leadership; Development Economics; Emerging Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Services Industry; Public Administration Industry
Iyer, Lakshmi, and Ian McKown Cornell. "The World Bank in 2012: Choosing a Leader." Harvard Business School Case 713-013, November 2012.
- September 2021
- Article
Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Clio Bryant Flikkema and Olga Shurchkov
We explore how groups deliberate and decide on ideas in an experiment with communication. We find that gender biases play a significant role in which group members are chosen to answer on behalf of the group. Conditional on the quality of their ideas, individuals are... View Details
Keywords: Gender Differences; Stereotypes; Teams; Economic Experiments; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Groups and Teams; Perception
Coffman, Katherine B., Clio Bryant Flikkema, and Olga Shurchkov. "Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions." Games and Economic Behavior 129 (September 2021): 329–349.
- June 23, 2020
- Article
Inequality in Socially Permissible Consumption
By: Serena Hagerty and Kate Barasz
Lower-income individuals are frequently criticized for their consumption decisions; this research examines why. Eleven preregistered studies document systematic differences in permissible consumption—interpersonal judgments about what is acceptable (or not) for others... View Details
Keywords: Interpersonal Judgments; Consumption; Economic Inequalty; Income; Equality and Inequality; Spending; Judgments
Hagerty, Serena, and Kate Barasz. "Inequality in Socially Permissible Consumption." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 25 (June 23, 2020): 14084–14093.
- 2022
- Article
How to Choose a Default
By: John Beshears, Richard T. Mason and Shlomo Benartzi
We have developed a model for setting a default when a population is choosing among ordered choices—that is, ones listed in ascending or descending order. A company, for instance, might want to set a default contribution rate that will increase employees’ average... View Details
Keywords: Nudge; Choice Architecture; Behavioral Economics; Behavioral Science; Default; Savings; Decision Choices and Conditions; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives
Beshears, John, Richard T. Mason, and Shlomo Benartzi. "How to Choose a Default." Behavioral Science & Policy 8, no. 1 (2022): 1–15.
- August 28, 2018
- Article
Maintaining Trust When Agents Can Engage in Self-deception
By: Andres Babino, Hernan A. Makse, Rafael Di Tella and Mariano Sigman
The coexistence of cooperation and selfish instincts is a remarkable characteristic of humans. Psychological research has unveiled the cognitive mechanisms behind self-deception. Two important findings are that a higher ambiguity about others’ social preferences leads... View Details
Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Cognitive Neuroscience; Corruption; Cooperation; Self-deception; Trust; Behavior
Babino, Andres, Hernan A. Makse, Rafael Di Tella, and Mariano Sigman. "Maintaining Trust When Agents Can Engage in Self-deception." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 35 (August 28, 2018): 8728–8733.
Stuti Agarwal
Stuti is a PhD student in Consumer Behavior at Harvard Business School. She completed her Bachelors in Economics and Psychology from Boston University in 2019 and went on to complete her MPS in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University in 2020. She... View Details
- 04 Jan 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Understanding Conformity: An Experimental Investigation
Keywords: by B. Douglas Bernheim & Christine Exley
Thomas W. Graeber
Thomas Graeber is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Negotiations in the MBA elective curriculum.
As an empirical behavioral and experimental... View Details
- 2021
- Article
To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law
By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate... View Details
Keywords: Personalized Law; Regulation; Regulatory Avoidance; Regulatory Arbitrage; Law And Economics; Law And Technology; Law And Artificial Intelligence; Futurism; Moral Hazard; Elicitation; Signaling; Privacy; Law; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning
Barry, Jordan M., John William Hatfield, and Scott Duke Kominers. "To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law." Art. 2. William & Mary Law Review 62, no. 3 (2021).
- March 2019
- Article
A Structural Analysis of the Role of Superstars in Crowdsourcing Contests
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Param Singh and Anindya Ghose
We investigate the long-term impact of competing against superstars in crowdsourcing contests. Using a unique 50-month longitudinal panel data set on 1677 software design crowdsourcing contests, we illustrate a learning effect where participants are able to improve... View Details
Keywords: Crowdsourcing Contests; Superstar Effect; Bayesian Learning; Utility; Economics Of Information System; Dynamic Structural Model; Dynamic Programming; Markov Chain; Monte Carlo; Learning; Competition; Performance Improvement
Zhang, Shunyuan, Param Singh, and Anindya Ghose. "A Structural Analysis of the Role of Superstars in Crowdsourcing Contests." Information Systems Research 30, no. 1 (March 2019): 15–33.
- 23 Jul 2015
- News
Money Cannot Be the God of Life: How CEO Pay Drives Inequality
- 2013
- Comment
Fairness and Redistribution: Comment
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
In an influential paper, Alesina and Angeletos (2005)—henceforth, AA—argued that a preference for fairness could lead two identical societies to choose different economic systems. In particular, two equilibria might arise: one with low taxes and a belief that the... View Details
Di Tella, Rafael, and Juan Dubra. "Fairness and Redistribution: Comment." American Economic Review 103, no. 1 (February 2013): 549–553.
Reshmaan N. Hussam
Reshmaan Hussam is an associate professor of business administration in the Business, Government and International Economy Unit, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a faculty affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty... View Details
- 17 Aug 2023
- Research & Ideas
‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto
In a little more than a decade, investors have transformed cryptocurrency from a techno-curiosity into a trillion-dollar-plus opportunity that has the potential to one day reshape the global economy. Yet in the past 10 years, little has been revealed about the... View Details
Keywords: by Ben Rand
- 2023
- Working Paper
Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms?
By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Tim McQuade, Gabriel Ramos, Thomas Rauter and Olivia Xiong
We conduct a field experiment in partnership with the largest job platform in Brazil to study how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices
of firms affect talent allocation. We find both an average job-seeker’s preference for ESG and a large degree of... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Job Search; Talent and Talent Management; Wages; Attitudes
Colonnelli, Emanuele, Tim McQuade, Gabriel Ramos, Thomas Rauter, and Olivia Xiong. Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms? Working Paper, November 2023.