Publications

SSRN

2013
Working Paper

Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns

By: William R. Kerr

This study tests the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade. The empirical analysis has three comparative advantages: including emerging and advanced economies, isolating panel variation regarding the link between productivity and... View Details

Keywords: Exports; Comparative Advantage; Technological Transfer; Innovation; Networks; Patents; Residency; Technology Adoption; Trade; Research and Development; Immigration; United States

SSRN

January 2013
Article

Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India

By: Shawn A. Cole, Xavier Gine, Jeremy Tobacman, Petia Topalova, Robert M. Townsend and James Vickery

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Household; India

2010
Working Paper

Dynamically Integrating Knowledge in Teams: Transforming Resources into Performance

By: Heidi K. Gardner, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

In knowledge-based environments, teams must develop a systematic approach to integrating knowledge resources throughout the course of projects in order to perform effectively. Yet, many teams fail to do so. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we examine how... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Effectiveness; Quality; Groups and Teams; Risk and Uncertainty; Familiarity

August 2008
Article

Economic Links and Predictable Returns

By: Lauren Cohen and Andrea Frazzini

This paper finds evidence of return predictability across economically linked firms. We test the hypothesis that in the presence of investors subject to attention constraints, stock prices do not promptly incorporate news about economically related firms, generating... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Price; Assets; Analytics and Data Science; Customers; Stocks; Equity; Strategy; Investment Return; Forecasting and Prediction

May 1986 (Revised February 1989)
Case

Gillette Co.: Dry Idea Advertising (B), The Bake-Off

Presents the second of two cases describing the struggle to find "the right advertising" for the Dry Idea antiperspirant brand introduced in 1978 by the Gillette Co. and its advertising agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne (BBDO). The case begins with Gillette's... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Product Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; United States

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06 Aug 2014
News

Boards can get better at expecting the unexpected

Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk-assessment and lending decisions. We first show that, while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more... View Details

March 2023
Case

Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2018, Ana Owczarzak was appointed to lead Google Ads' new innovation and accelerator team - the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL). The purpose of SAIL was to offer testing and incubation services for individuals within Google Ads who were developing new... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Design; Technology Industry; Advertising Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

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The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As... View Details

22 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Humans vs. Machines: Untangling the Tasks AI Can (and Can't) Handle

School faculty worked closely with BCG to test AI in real-world simulations. They found that consultants using AI complete certain kinds of tasks faster, with results that are 40 percent higher in quality (though AI may somewhat stifle... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

02 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

The lightning-fast ascent of generative AI isn’t the only sea change on the horizon for businesses in the new year. The global economy is in flux as war, climate change, trade issues, and infrastructure problems demand attention. Many companies continue to struggle to... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

Article

Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures

By: Julian De Freitas, Hagop Sarkissian, George E. Newman, Igor Grossman, Felipe De Brigard, Andres Luco and Joshua Knobe

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to... View Details

Keywords: Concepts; Social Cognition; Moral Reasoning; True Self; Culture; Misanthropy; Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Moral Sensibility

January 2016 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Match Next: Next Generation Middle School?

By: John J-H Kim and Daniel Goldberg

This case is set in 2015 as a team at Match Education, a high performing charter middle school in Boston, explores new staffing and technology approaches in their quest to obtain what they term "jaw dropping" results. The team hopes to test and model for other schools... View Details

Keywords: General Management; K-12; Charter Schools; Public Schools; Edtech; Education; Information Technology; Management; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Education Industry; Boston

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Regular handwashing with soap is believed to have substantial impacts on child health in the developing world. Most handwashing campaigns have failed, however, to establish and maintain a regular practice of handwashing. Motivated by scholarship that suggests... View Details

Research Summary

Conceptualizing and measuring environmental sustainability

By: Michael W. Toffel

This research involves developing clarity around the murky construct of environmental sustainability, and improving techniques to measure corporate environmental performance. My prior research in this domain includes View Details

Research Summary

The Talent at the Table: Business Expertise and Share Ownership in Fortune 500 Boardrooms

This paper examines the relationship between corporate value and "vestige" directors, defined as directors who own sizeable shareholdings but lack salient business experience relative to their peers on Fortune 500 boards. These people come to serve on... View Details

December 2024
Article

Are Bankruptcy Professional Fees Excessively High?

By: Samuel Antill

Chapter 7 is the most popular bankruptcy system for U.S. firms and individuals. Chapter 7 professional fees are substantial. Theoretically, high fees might be an unavoidable cost of incentivizing professionals. I test this empirically. I study trustees, the most... View Details

Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Motivation and Incentives; Policy

June 2024
Article

Stereotypes and Belief Updating

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis and Leena Kulkarni

We explore how feedback shapes, and perpetuates, gender gaps in self-assessments. Participants in our experiment take tests of their ability across different domains. We elicit their beliefs of their performance before and after feedback. We find that, even after the... View Details

Keywords: Beliefs; Stereotypes; Self-assessment; Performance Evaluation; Gender; Cognition and Thinking; Perception; Knowledge Sharing

July 2021
Article

Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting... View Details

Keywords: Campaigns; Candidates; Elections; Experiment; Political Parties; Turnout; Voting Behavior; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Italy