Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,412)
- Faculty Publications (209)
- 2021
- Working Paper
Does Observability Amplify Sensitivity to Moral Frames? Evaluating a Reputation-Based Account of Moral Preferences
By: Valerio Capraro, Jillian J. Jordan and Ben Tappin
A growing body of work suggests that people are sensitive to moral framing in economic games involving prosociality, suggesting that people hold moral preferences for doing the “right thing”. What gives rise to these preferences? Here, we evaluate the explanatory power... View Details
- November–December 2020
- Article
Getting Serious About Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case
By: Robin Ely and David A. Thomas
Leaders may mean well when they tout the economic payoffs of hiring more women and people of color, but there is no research support for the notion that diversifying the workforce automatically improves a company’s performance. This article critiques the popular... View Details
- November 2020
- Article
Tackling Youth Unemployment: Evidence from a Labor Market Experiment in Uganda
By: Livia Alfonsi, Oriana Bandiera, Vittorio Bassi, Robin Burgess, Imran Rasul, Munshi Sulaiman and Anna Vitali
We design a labor market experiment to compare demand- and supply-side policies to tackle youth unemployment, a key issue in low-income countries. The experiment tracks 1700 workers and 1500 firms over four years to compare the effect of offering workers either... View Details
- October 2020
- Article
Overcoming Resource Scarcity: Consumers' Response to Gifts Intending to Save Time and Money
By: Alice Lee-Yoon, Grant Donnelly, A.V. Whillans and A.V. Whillans
Consumers feel increasingly pressed for time and money. Gifts have the potential to reduce scarcity in
recipients’ lives, yet little is known about how recipients perceive gifts given with the intention of saving them time or money. Across five studies (N =... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Raymond Kluender
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates.... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
(When) Does Appearance Matter? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Subhradip Sarker
While there is evidence about labor market discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, we know little about whether physical appearance leads to discrimination in labor market outcomes. We deploy a randomized experiment on 1,000 respondents in India between... View Details
- September 2020
- Article
Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization
By: Rawi Abdelal
The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Do Physician Incentives Increase Patient Medication Adherence?
By: Edward Kong, John Beshears, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian, Kevin Volpp, George Loewenstein, Jonathan Kolstad and James J. Choi
We conducted a randomized experiment (911 primary care practices and 8,935 nonadherent patients) to test the effect of paying physicians for increasing patient medication adherence in three drug classes: diabetes medication, antihypertensives, and statins. We measured... View Details
- July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Pattern Brands
By: Sunil Gupta, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley
In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies—such as inability to scale and... View Details
Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Model; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Business Strategy; Diversification; Competitive Advantage; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; North and Central America; United States; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization
By: Rawi Abdelal
The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
In Generous Offers I Trust: The Effect of First-offer Value on Economically Vulnerable Behaviors
By: M. Jeong, J. Minson and F. Gino
Negotiation scholarship espouses the importance of opening a bargaining situation with an aggressive offer, given the power of first offers to shape concessionary behavior and outcomes. In our research, we identify a surprising consequence to this common prescription.... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
The Isolated Choice Effect and Its Implications for Gender Diversity in Organizations
By: Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios, Aneesh Rai and Katherine L. Milkman
We highlight a feature of personnel selection decisions that can influence the gender diversity of groups and teams. Specifically, we show that people are less likely to choose candidates whose gender would increase group diversity when making personnel selections in... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles
By: Falk Bräuning and Victoria Ivashina
Foreign banks’ lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated predominantly in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle,... View Details
Keywords: Global Business Cycle; Monetary Policy; Reaching For Yield; Money; Policy; Credit; Emerging Markets
- May 27, 2020
- Editorial
Stable Democracies Better at Fostering Economic Growth
By: Ashish Nanda
Differences across countries in how the COVID-19 pandemic has been managed have led some to raise the broader question of whether democracies are necessarily a good way to organise a society. Research findings clearly show that compared to autocracies, democracies... View Details
- April 2020 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Shorefast: A Strange and Familiar Way to Reimagine Capitalism
By: Brian Trelstad, Wendy Smith and Natalie Slawinski
In 2006, Zita Cobb and two of her brothers, Alan Cobb and Tony Cobb, native Newfoundlanders, launched Shorefast to help grow another leg of Fogo Island’s economy. Like so many rural communities, Fogo Island’s fate was tied directly to one primary resource—in this case... View Details
- March 30, 2020
- Article
Why Is the U.S. Behind on Coronavirus Testing?
By: Stefan Thomke
Coronavirus testing is needed to address the uncertainty in making decisions about patient treatment, resource allocation, policy, and so much more. Answers to questions such as “When should we relax social distancing measures—and for whom?” or “How many ventilators... View Details
- March 2020
- Article
A Revolution in Economics? It's Just Getting Started...
By: Shawn A. Cole, William Pariente and Anja Sautmann
We have each experienced thrills and pain while supporting the mission of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, which facilitated many of the experiments described in the 2019 Nobel Prize citation. J-PAL in many ways seeks to fulfill what Angrist and Pischke... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Wellthy: The Economics of Caring
By: Brian L. Trelstad and Joseph B. Fuller
In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA ’09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a young professional providing care for her... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
Communicating with Warmth in Distributive Negotiations Is Surprisingly Counterproductive
By: M. Jeong, J. Minson, M. Yeomans and F. Gino
When entering into a negotiation, individuals have the choice to enact a variety of communication styles. We test the differential impact of being “warm and friendly” versus “tough and firm” in a distributive negotiation, when first offers are held constant and... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
When Do We Punish People Who Don't?
By: Justin W. Martin, Jillian J. Jordan, David G. Rand and Fiery Cushman
People often punish norm violations. In what cases is such punishment viewed as normative—a behavior that we “should”or even“must”engage in? We approach this question by asking when people who fail to punish a norm violator are, themselves, punished. (For instance, a... View Details