Publications

Research Summary

Do Appearances Matter? The Impact of EPS Accretion and Dilution on Stock Prices

There is a widespread concern among practitioners and corporate managers that transactions which result in changes in future earnings-per-share (EPS) have real effects on stock prices, irrespective of whether these changes reflect differences in future cash flows. As... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Cross-Border Reverse Mergers: Causes and Consequences

By: Jordan Siegel and Yanbo Wang

We study non-U.S. companies that have used reverse mergers as a means to adopt U.S. corporate law (and sometimes U.S. securities law as well). Early adopters of cross-border reverse mergers and those firms that hired a Big Four auditor exhibited superior corporate... View Details

Keywords: Reverse Merger; Corporate Law; Corporate Governance; Nevada; United States

Article

Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?

By: Samuel Antill

In U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Bankruptcy Reorganization; Recovery Rate; Structural Estimation; Roy Model; 363 Sales; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

September–October 2013
Article

The Dynamic Advertising Effect of Collegiate Athletics

By: Doug J. Chung

I measure the spillover effect of intercollegiate athletics on the quantity and quality of applicants to institutions of higher education in the United States, popularly known as the "Flutie Effect." I treat athletic success as a stock of goodwill that decays over... View Details

Keywords: Choice Modeling; Entertainment Marketing; Heterogeneity; Panel Data; Structural Modeling; Rights; Analytics and Data Science; Higher Education; Ethics; Consumer Behavior; Advertising; Sports; Advertising Industry; Education Industry

August 2004
Article

Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?

By: Rafael Di Tella, Alberto Alesina and Robert MacCulloch

We study the effect of the level of inequality in society on individual well-being using a total of 123,668 answers to a survey question about “happiness”. We find that individuals have a lower tendency to report themselves happy when inequality is high, even after... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Happiness; Global Range; Local Range; United States; Europe

January–February 2011
Article

Adverse Selection in Online 'Trust' Certifications and Search Results

By: Benjamin Edelman

Widely used online "trust" authorities issue certifications without substantial verification of recipients' actual trustworthiness. This lax approach gives rise to adverse selection: the sites that seek and obtain trust certifications are actually less trustworthy than... View Details

Keywords: Online Advertising; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Safety; Trust; Internet; Search Technology; Web Sites

January 2020
Article

The Market Reacts Quickly: Changes in Paclitaxel Vascular Device Purchasing Within the Ascension Healthcare System

By: Peter P. Monteleone, Subhash Banerjee, Priya Kothapalli, Ariel Dora Stern, Daniel Fehder, Ron Ginor, Dominic Vollmar, Edward T. A. Fry and Mark J. Pirwitz

Background. A meta-analysis of trials in endovascular therapy suggested an increased mortality associated with treatment exposure to paclitaxel. Multiple publications and corrections of prior data were performed, and the United States Food and Drug Administration has... View Details

Keywords: Medical Devices; Health Testing and Trials; Analysis; Sales

14 Oct 2015
HBS Seminar

Scott Stern, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management

2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry

10 Oct 2018
HBS Seminar

Michael Bordo, Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences

August 2016
Article

Independent Directors' Dissent on Boards: Evidence from Listed Companies in China

By: Juan Ma and Tarun Khanna

In this paper, we examine the circumstances under which so-called "independent" directors voice their independent views on public boards in a sample of Chinese firms. First, we ask why independent directors dissent, i.e. how they justify such dissent to public... View Details

Keywords: Independent Directors; China; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; China

Article

How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?

By: Aaron K. Chatterji, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

Ratings of corporations' environmental activities and capabilities influence billions of dollars of "socially responsible" investments as well as some consumers, activists, and potential employees. In one of the first studies to assess these ratings, we examine how... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Effectiveness; Natural Environment; Pollutants