Publications

Educators

Article

Marketing Complex Financial Products in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Rainfall Insurance in India

By: Sarthak Gaurav, Shawn A. Cole and Jeremy Tobacman

Recent financial liberalization in emerging economies has led to the rapid introduction of new financial products. Lack of experience with financial products, low levels of education, and low financial literacy may slow adoption of these products. This article reports... View Details

Keywords: Literacy; Insurance; Marketing; Decisions; Demand and Consumers; Financial Instruments; Emerging Markets; Education; Personal Finance; Agribusiness; Developing Countries and Economies; Innovation and Invention; Gujarat

Article

Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market

By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar

We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of... View Details

Keywords: Advice; Customers; Insurance; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Ethics; India

23 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 23

Course MaterialsBANEX and the ,,No Pago" Movement (A) Shawn Cole and Baily Blair KempnerHarvard Business School Case 211-092 This case examines Grassroots Capital's decision of whether or not to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: Dec. 11

Back, Moving Forward: A Review of Group and Team-Based Research, edited by Margaret A. Neale and Elizabeth A. Mannix, 359-381. Emerald Group Publishing, 2012 Abstract... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Jan 2018
First Look

January 30, 2018

2017 Annual Review of Economics Agricultural Insurance and Economic Development By: Cole, Shawn A., and Wentao Xiong Abstract—This article provides a review of recent research on agricultural insurance (AI) in developing countries.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2022
Article

Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts

By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and Peter Tufano

This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Banking; Savings; Prize-linked Savings; Lottery; Household; Personal Finance; Saving; Banks and Banking

17 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 17

Birchbox Defends Against Copycat Competitors Peter A. Coles and Benjamin EdelmanHarvard Business School Case 912-010 Birchbox offers trial-sized beauty products delivered monthly View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 13

PublicationsHigher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value Authors:Michael Beer, Russel A. Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote, Tobias Fredberg, and Flemming Norrgren Publication:Harvard Business Press, 2011 Abstract... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2021
Article

Changing Gambling Behavior through Experiential Learning

By: Shawn A. Cole, Martin Abel and Bilal Zia

This paper tests experiential learning as a debiasing tool to reduce gambling in South Africa, through a randomized field experiment. The study implements a simple, interactive game that simulates the odds of winning the national lottery through dice rolling.... View Details

Keywords: Debiasing; Experiential Learning; Behavioral Economics; Financial Education; Learning; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Behavior; Decision Making

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07 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: February 7

to invest in social service provision. Purchase this case:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/212055-PDF-ENG China Life: Micro Insurance for the Poor Shawn Cole and Lilei XuHarvard Business School Case... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2009
Teaching Note

First National Bank's Golden Opportunity (TN)

Teaching Note for [208072]. View Details

Keywords: Saving; Product; Interest Rates; Personal Finance; Cost vs Benefits; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment; Problems and Challenges; Demand and Consumers; Product Launch; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; South Africa

Article

Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Elections, Banks and Agricultural Lending in India

Keywords: Failure; Voting; Banks and Banking; Agribusiness; India

2021
Working Paper

Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors

By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Impact Portfolio Companies; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Investment Portfolio; Business Ventures; Analytics and Data Science; Performance; United States

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August 2020
Supplement

Nancy Pfund DBL Partners

October 2019
Supplement

OpenInvest

2008
Working Paper

Financial Development, Bank Ownership, and Growth. Or, Does Quantity Imply Quality?

In 1980, India nationalized its large private banks. This induced different bank ownership patterns across different towns, allowing credible identification of the effects of bank ownership on financial development, lending rates, and the quality of intermediation, as... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Credit; Banks and Banking; Interest Rates; State Ownership; Private Ownership; Banking Industry; India