Publications

February 2020
Article

Using Charity Performance Metrics as an Excuse Not to Give

By: Christine L. Exley

There is an increasing pressure to give more wisely and effectively. There is, relatedly, an increasing focus on charity performance metrics. Via a series of experiments, this paper provides a caution to such a focus. While information on charity performance metrics... View Details

Keywords: Charitable Giving; Prosocial Behavior; Altruism; Excuses; Self-serving Biases; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Behavior

October 2013 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Demarketing Soda in New York City

By: John A. Quelch, Margaret L. Rodriguez, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Christine Snively

In 2013, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried and failed to institute a ban on serving sizes of large sugary beverages. Obesity posed a large public health risk to the city. Mayor Bloomberg's proposed ban was one of many attempts to combat the rising threat of... View Details

Keywords: Soda; Public Health; Business And Public Policy; Obesity; Business and Government Relations; Public Sector; Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Marketing; Health; City; Food and Beverage Industry; New York (city, NY)

Educators

August 2019
Supplement

Legal Time - Confidential Information for the Defense Attorney (Drew Davis)

By: Christine L. Exley, Katherine B. Coffman and Joshua Schwartzstein

Legal Time is a two-party dynamic negotiation simulation. Students take the role of either the prosecution or the defense in a case that centers on a client who has been accused of spear-heading a conspiracy to commit wire fraud. This conflict-resolution scenario gives... View Details

Keywords: Conflict Resolution; Time Stress; Negotiation; Conflict and Resolution; Fairness; Learning

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

Working PapersThe New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks Authors:Christopher Avery, Christine Jolls, Richard Posner, and Alvin E. Roth Abstract In the past, judges have often hired applicants for judicial clerkships as early as the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2017
Case

La Ceiba: Navigating Microfinance and Relationships in Honduras (A)

By: Christine L. Exley, John Beshears and Alison Wood Brooks

This case follows the program director of La Ceiba, a Honduras-based microfinance institution, as he navigates four challenging negotiation scenarios involving the organization's loan clients. Students are asked to adopt the perspective of the Program Director and to... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Power; Apology; Negotiation Process; Microfinance; Power and Influence; Situation or Environment

Educators

26 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 26, 2019

provides information for detecting root causes. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55759 forthcoming Management Science Using Charity Performance Metrics as an Excuse Not to Give By: Exley, Christine View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2013
Chapter

Why Is So Much of the World Poor?

By: Shawn Humphrey and Christine L. Exley

February 2018
Article

The Impact of a Surprise Donation Ask

By: Christine L. Exley and Ragan Petrie

Individuals frequently exploit "flexibility" built into decision environments to give less. They use uncertainty to justify options benefiting themselves over others, they avoid information that may encourage them to give, and they avoid the ask itself. In this paper,... View Details

Keywords: Charitable Giving; Prosocial Behavior; Self-serving Biases; Excuses; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Behavior

2021
Working Paper

Information Avoidance and Image Concerns

By: Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

A rich literature finds that individuals avoid information, even information that is instrumental to their choices. A common hypothesis posits that individuals strategically avoid information to hold particular beliefs or to take certain actions--such as behaving... View Details

Keywords: Image Motivation; Self-image; Information; Behavior; Identity; Personal Characteristics

October 2017
Article

Observability Increases the Demand for Commitment Devices

By: Christine L. Exley and Jeffrey K. Naecker

Previous research often interprets the choice to restrict one’s future opportunity set as evidence for sophisticated time inconsistency. We propose an additional mechanism that may contribute to the demand for commitment technology: the desire to signal to others. We... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Attitudes

27 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 27, 2007

Working PapersPublic Action for Public Goods Authors:Abhijit Banerjee, Lakshmi Iyer, and Rohini Somanathan Abstract This paper focuses on the relationship between public action and access to public goods. It begins by developing a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2022
Working Paper

When Do Individuals Give Up Agency? The Role of Decision Avoidance

By: Holly Dykstra, Christine L. Exley and Muriel Niederle

A common policy problem is that individuals reject recommended options and insist on making their own choices. Via a large-scale experiment, we document and investigate what factors contribute to this preference for agency. Our main results show that individuals’... View Details

Keywords: Choice; Decision Making; Policy; Cognition and Thinking

January 2019
Article

Wage Elasticities in Working and Volunteering: The Role of Reference Points in a Laboratory Study

By: Christine L. Exley and Stephen J. Terry

We experimentally test how effort responds to wages—randomly assigned to accrue to individuals or to a charity—in the presence of expectations-based reference points or targets. When individuals earn money for themselves, higher wages lead to higher effort with... View Details

Keywords: Reference Points; Wage Elasticities; Labor Supply; Effor; Volunteering; Prosocial Behavior; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Nonprofit Organizations; Behavior

24 Feb 2015
First Look

First Look: February 24

definition of profit by changing accounting rules. On one level, this corporate behavior embodies the capitalist spirit articulated by Milton Friedman: "The social responsibility of business is to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2022
Working Paper

The Gender Minority Gaps in Confidence and Self-Evaluations

By: Billur Aksoy, Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

An increasing share of the population identifies as something other than male or female. Yet, we know very little about the economic preferences and beliefs of gender minorities. In this paper, we document a “gender minority gap” in confidence and in self-evaluations.... View Details

Keywords: Self-evaluation; Confidence; Gender; Identity; Perception; Income