Publications

November 2014
Article

The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying

By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra

We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details

Keywords: Lobbying; Political Economy; H-1B; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Policy; Immigration

2013
Working Paper

The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying

By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra

We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details

Keywords: Lobbying; Political Economy; H-1B; Business Ventures; Policy; Government Legislation; Immigration; Business and Government Relations; Research; Prejudice and Bias

SSRN

2023
Working Paper

No Mask, No Service: Customer Reaction to Walmart’s 2020 National Mask Mandate

By: Innessa Colaiacovo

Multi-location firms face a complex series of economic tradeoffs when deciding whether to implement standard processes or allow processes to vary across establishments. One element of this tradeoff is customer response. This paper explores customer reaction to a... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Geographic Location; Policy; Health Pandemics; Retail Industry; United States

29 Sep 2015
HBS Seminar

Kira Fabrizio, Boston University

29 Apr 2016
HBS Seminar

Richard Freeman, Harvard University & NBER

Research Summary

Consumer's Relationships with Technologies

Susan M. Fournier is involved with two lines of research investigating consumers' relationships with technological products. The first project (with Professor David Mick of the University of Wisconsin) concerns 'everyday technologies' such as... View Details

2024
Working Paper

A Gender Backlash: Does Exposure to Female Labor Market Participation Fuel Gender Conservatism?

By: Paula Rettl, Diane Bolet, Catherine E. De Vries, Simone Cremaschi, Tarik Abou-Chadi and Sergi Pardos-Prado

The growing participation of women in the labor market has marked a significant societal transformation, coinciding with the rise of gender conservatism and far-right support. We study whether the economic consequences of labor market feminization and gender backlash... View Details

Keywords: Gender Bias; Gender Equality; Gender Inclusivity; Politics; Political Backlash; Political Culture; Conservatism; Gender; Government and Politics; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Labor

November 2024
Article

Price Discounts and Cheapflation During the Post-Pandemic Inflation Surge

By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov

We study how within-store price variation changes with inflation, and whether households exploit it to attenuate the inflation burden. We use micro price data for food products sold by 91 large multi-channel retailers in ten countries between 2018 and 2024. Measuring... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Price; Consumer Behavior; Personal Finance; Product Positioning

Forthcoming
Article

Economic Integration and the Transmission of Democracy

By: Marco Tabellini and Giacomo Magistretti

In this paper, we study the effects of economic integration with democratic partners on democracy. We assemble a large country-level panel dataset from 1960 to 2015, and exploit improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation to derive a time-varying instrument... View Details

Keywords: Democratization; Institutional Development; Economic Integration; International Trade; Democracy; Political Preferences; Institutions; Trade; Global Range; Economics; Government and Politics

Purchase

August 2022
Article

What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh and Kannan Srinivasan

We study how Airbnb property demand changed after the acquisition of verified images (taken by Airbnb’s photographers) and explore what makes a good image for an Airbnb property. Using deep learning and difference-in-difference analyses on an Airbnb panel dataset... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Property Demand; Computer Vision; Deep Learning; Image Feature Extraction; Content Engineering; Property; Marketing; Demand and Consumers

SSRN

November–December 2016
Article

The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Industry

By: Yongwook Paik and Feng Zhu

Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details

Keywords: Patent Wars; Patent Litigation; Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement; Institutions; Patent Thicket; Smartphone; Patents; Corporate Strategy; Mobile Technology

December 2015
Article

Harnessing Productive Tensions in Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Work Integration Social Enterprises

By: Julie Battilana, Metin Sengul, Anne-Claire Pache and Jacob Model

We examine the factors that influence the social performance of hybrid organizations that pursue a social mission, and sustain their operations through commercial activities, by studying work integration social enterprises (WISEs). We argue that social imprinting and... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Organizations; Performance Productivity

Purchase

22 Jun 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes

Keywords: by Matthew Weinzierl

2016
Working Paper

The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Market

By: Feng Zhu

Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details

Keywords: Patent Wars; Patent Litigation; Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement; Institutions; Smartphone; Patent Thicket; Digital Platforms; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Globalized Markets and Industries; Business Strategy; Telecommunications Industry

Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers' decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Saving and Consumption Responses to Student Loan Forbearance

By: Justin Katz

How do households adjust savings and consumption in response to liquidity from debt relief? I study this question using policy variation induced by federal student loan forbearance in the 2020 CARES Act and an individual-level panel of daily financial transactions for... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Consumer Behavior; Borrowing and Debt; Interest Rates; Financial Liquidity; Personal Finance; Government Legislation

SSRN

Article

Value of New Performance Information in Healthcare: Evidence from Japan

By: Susanna Gallani, Takehisa Kajiwara and Ranjani Krishnan

Mandatory measurement and disclosure of outcome measures are commonly used policy tools in healthcare. The effectiveness of such disclosures relies on the extent to which the new information produced by the mandatory system is internalized by the healthcare... View Details

Keywords: Value Of Information; Feedback; Patient Satisfaction; Healthcare; Health Care and Treatment; Satisfaction; Information; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Improvement

January 2009
Article

Turbulent Firms, Turbulent Wages?

By: Diego A. Comin, Erica L. Groshen and Bess Rabin

Has greater turbulence among firms fueled rising wage instability in the U.S.? Gottschalk and Moffitt [1994] find that rising earnings instability was responsible for one third to one half of the rise in wage inequality during the 1980s. These growing transitory... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Production; Business Earnings; Fluctuation; Performance; Volatility; Relationships; Sales; Business Ventures; United States