Publications

November–December 2019
Article

Making Sense of Soft Information: Interpretation Bias and Loan Quality

By: Dennis Campbell, Maria Loumioti and Regina Wittenberg Moerman

We explore whether behavioral biases impede the effective processing and interpretation of soft information in private lending. Taking advantage of the internal reporting system of a large federal credit union, we delineate three important biases likely to affect the... View Details

Keywords: Soft Information; Lending; Banking; Information; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Decision Making

04 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

The Real Cost of Bribery

understanding of the benefits of bribery—facilitating entry into a market, for starters," says Serafeim, an assistant professor in the Accounting and Management unit. "But we still have a much more limited understanding about... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2015
Working Paper

Expertise vs. Bias in Evaluation: Evidence from the NIH

By: Danielle Li

Evaluators with expertise in a particular field may have an informational advantage in separating good projects from bad. At the same time, they may also have personal preferences that impact their objectivity. This paper develops a framework for separately identifying... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Performance Evaluation; Experience and Expertise

Article

A Fair Game? Racial Bias and Repeated Interaction between NBA Coaches and Players

By: Letian Zhang

There is strong evidence of racial bias in organizations but little understanding of how it changes with repeated interaction. This study proposes that repeated interaction has the potential to reduce racial bias, but its moderating effects are limited to the treatment... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Bias; Interaction; NBA; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Equality and Inequality; Interpersonal Communication; Sports

2013
Article

Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How we Can Fix It

By: C. Moore and F. Gino

This chapter is about the social nature of morality. Using the metaphor of the moral compass to describe individuals' inner sense of right and wrong, we offer a framework to help us understand social reasons why our moral compass can come under others' control, leading... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Moral Sensibility; Behavior

Research Summary

Simultaneous Distinction, Democratization and Omnivorism Effects: A Longitudinal Analysis of Dynamic Symbolic Boundaries in Counterfeit Consumption Networks

Sociologists have long examined the interactive relationship between social structure, taste and power. This literature has overwhelmingly fallen into three, ostensibly competing, theoretical “camps”: Distinction, where high-status consumers use... View Details

Research Summary

Current Research

Professor Chung models the effect of incentive compensation to study its impact on the sales force. Using data from a Fortune 500 company, he has developed a dynamic structural model of sales force response to a bonus-based compensation plan and examined how various... View Details

Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments

Switchback experiments, where a firm sequentially exposes an experimental unit to random treatments, are among the most prevalent designs used in the technology sector, with applications ranging from ride-hailing platforms to online marketplaces. Although... View Details

2025
Working Paper

Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning

By: Liangzong Ma, Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant challenges.... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Policy; Deep Reinforcement Learning; Representation Learning; Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Foreign Direct Investment; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

2017
Working Paper

A Welfarist Role for Nonwelfarist Rules: An Example with Envy

By: Matthew Weinzierl

I propose and formalize an argument for why economists working in the welfarist normative tradition should include nonwelfarist principles in how they judge economic policy. The key idea behind this argument is that the world is too complex, and our ability to model it... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Policy; Economics

SSRN

October 19, 2021
Article

The Facebook Trap

By: Andy Wu

Facebook has a clear mission: Connect everyone in the world. Clarity is good, but in Facebook’s case, it has also put the company in a bind because the mission—and the company’s vision for creating value through network effects—has also become the source of its biggest... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Mission and Purpose; Network Effects; Value Creation; Corporate Accountability; Strategy

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February 2018 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Rise of the Drones: Identified Technologies

By: Andy Wu and George Gonzalez

The founder and CEO of Identified Technologies, a Pittsburgh-based drone software and services company, faces a dilemma when San Francisco–based DroneDeploy begins to disrupt the industry with its drone software platform. Identified Technologies needs to consider... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Disruption; Network Effects; Computer Industry; Web Services Industry; Pittsburgh; San Francisco

Educators

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Research Summary

How a Multicultural Social Environment Influences Creativity and Innovation

My second stream of research draws on my first stream of work to examine how a multicultural social environment influences individuals’ creative thinking and performance at a global workplace. In an on-going project, I found that individuals high in cultural... View Details

September 2017
Case

NBCUniversal Telemundo: Transforming Latino Television

By: Henry W. McGee, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Christine Snively

In August 2017, Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal International Group and NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, considered how the Miami-based Spanish-language TV network Telemundo could succeed in a rapidly shifting media landscape. Over the past few years,... View Details

Keywords: Television Industry; Television Advertising; Broadcasting; Telecommunications; Internet; Television Entertainment; Internet and the Web; Advertising; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Telecommunications Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Miami

Educators

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June 2007
Article

Merchant or Two-Sided Platform?

By: Andrei Hagiu

This paper provides a first pass at clarifying the economic tradeoffs between two polar strategies for market intermediation: the "merchant" mode, in which the intermediary buys from sellers and resells to buyers; and the "two-sided platform" mode, under which the... View Details

Keywords: Merchants; Two-sided Platforms; Intermediaries; Two-Sided Markets; Digital Platforms

20 Nov 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?

Keywords: by Diego A. Comin, William Easterly & Erick Gong; Technology

2017
Working Paper

Exploring the Relationship between Architecture Coupling and Software Vulnerabilities: A Google Chrome Case

By: Robert Lagerstrom, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Dan Sturtevant and Lee Doolan

Employing software metrics, such as size and complexity, for predicting defects has been given a lot of attention over the years and has proven very useful. However, the few studies looking at software architecture and vulnerabilities are limited in scope and findings.... View Details

Keywords: Software; Architecture; Coupling; Vulnerabilities; Applications and Software; Complexity; Measurement and Metrics

Research Summary

Health-care Applications

Active postmarketing drug surveillance. There is substantial interest within the U.S. health community and among health policymakers in developing a surveillance system that scans public health databases in order to proactively detect potential drug safety... View Details

2013
Dissertation

Designing Freemium: A Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics

By: Clarence Lee, Vineet Kumar and Sunil Gupta

Abstract. Over the past decade "freemium" (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers... View Details

Keywords: Discrete-Continuous Choice Dynamic Structural Models; Bayesian Estimation; Word-of-Mouth; Digital Services; Freemium; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Motivation and Incentives; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Reference Programs; Business Startups