Publications

2023
Working Paper

Efficient Discovery of Heterogeneous Quantile Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments via Anomalous Pattern Detection

By: Edward McFowland III, Sriram Somanchi and Daniel B. Neill

In the recent literature on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects, each proposed method makes its own set of restrictive assumptions about the intervention’s effects and which subpopulations to explicitly estimate. Moreover, the majority of the literature provides... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Program Evaluation; Algorithms; Distributional Average Treatment Effect; Treatment Effect Subset Scan; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

September 2018
Case

Kevin Ryan Inc.

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Greg Marsh

The case focuses on the hiring process for a CEO. Kevin Ryan had a solid trajectory as a serial entrepreneur of well-known ventures like Gilt Group, DoubleClick, Business Insider, among others. Ryan tended to involve himself in all aspects of his ventures: ideation,... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Team Building; Interviews; CEO; Human Resources; Selection and Staffing; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; United States; North America

November 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

NovoCure Ltd.

By: William A. Sahlman and Sarah Flaherty

Venture capitalist William Doyle must raise $35 million for a portfolio company with a promising, novel cancer therapy, just as global capital markets are imploding in the fall of 2008. NovoCure, Ltd., has developed an electrical-field-based therapy, called Tumor... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Technological Innovation; Financial Services Industry

Article

Reliable Post hoc Explanations: Modeling Uncertainty in Explainability

By: Dylan Slack, Sophie Hilgard, Sameer Singh and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As black box explanations are increasingly being employed to establish model credibility in high stakes settings, it is important to ensure that these explanations are accurate and reliable. However, prior work demonstrates that explanations generated by... View Details

Keywords: Black Box Explanations; Bayesian Modeling; Decision Making; Risk and Uncertainty; Information Technology

November 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Drilling South: Petrobras Evaluates Pecom

By: Mihir A. Desai and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

The Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, is evaluating the acquisition of an Argentine oil company, the Perez Companc Group (Pecom). The acquisition would increase Petrobras' oil reserves and expand its interests outside Brazil, a significant step for the largest company... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Non-Renewable Energy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Corporate Governance; Risk Management; Emerging Markets; State Ownership; Performance Evaluation; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Energy Industry; Argentina; Brazil

Research Summary

Knowledge flows and capability acquisition

By: Willy C. Shih

Technological advancements are a major source of improvement in competiveness, and a firm’s incentives to invest are diminished when the knowledge generated is involuntarily dispersed to competitors. While intellectual property rights can moderate this flow to the... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Aspects Of Strategy; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Spillovers; Knowledge Acquisition; Manufacturing Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; China

05 Sep 2023
Book

Failing Well: How Your ‘Intelligent Failure’ Unlocks Your Full Potential

acid deficiency. When the drug was reformulated with folic acid, it passed its efficacy trials, eventually becoming a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical that helped thousands of lung cancer patients. How to fail intelligently Edmondson,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2012
Working Paper

School Accountability and Principal Mobility: How No Child Left Behind Affects the Allocation of School Leaders

By: Danielle Li

The move toward increased school accountability may substantially affect the career risks that school leaders face without providing commensurate changes in pay. Since effective school leaders likely have significant scope in choosing where to work, these uncompensated... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Education; North Carolina

11 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 11

forthcoming Journal of Accounting & Economics Career Concerns of Banking Analysts By: Horton, Joanne, George Serafeim, and Shan Wu Abstract—We study how career concerns influence banking analysts' forecasts and how their forecasting behavior benefits both them and... View Details

Research Summary

Of Measurement and Mission: Accounting for Performance in Non-Governmental Organizations

By: Debora L. Spar

As members of civil society NGOs would seem to have a built-in proclivity towards representation: towards working on behalf of some group of people, or toward some specific goal. Yet in practice such moments of accountability are rare. Unlike other social agents,... View Details

Teaching Interest

MBA Elective Curriculum: Investment Strategies

By: Malcolm P. Baker

This is a CORE course for students pursuing careers in finance. Thus, students interested in pursuing careers in mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, endowments, wealth management, financial consulting, marketing and client service, sales and trading,... View Details

2023
Article

On the Impact of Actionable Explanations on Social Segregation

By: Ruijiang Gao and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As predictive models seep into several real-world applications, it has become critical to ensure that individuals who are negatively impacted by the outcomes of these models are provided with a means for recourse. To this end, there has been a growing body of research... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; AI and Machine Learning; Outcome or Result

September 2013
Article

Testimonials Do Not Convert Patients from Brand to Generic Medication

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Gwendolyn Reynolds

Objectives: To assess whether the addition of a peer testimonial to an informational mailing increases conversion rates from brand name prescription medications to lower-cost therapeutic equivalents, and whether the testimonial's efficacy increases when... View Details

Keywords: Testimonial; Peer Information; Social Proximity; Communication; Generic Medication; Familiarity; Marketing Communications; Decision Choices and Conditions; Identity; Health Care and Treatment; Marketing Reference Programs; Power and Influence; Brands and Branding; Health Industry

March 2020 (Revised June 2023)
Case

EyeControl: Inspiring Communication

By: Paul A. Gompers and Danielle Golan

Eye-controlled communication device startup EyeControl was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2016 by cofounders with a shared personal connection to locked-in syndrome—a neurological disorder that left sufferers cognitively sound, yet paralyzed, with the exception of eye... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Communication Technology; Business Startups; Expansion; Finance; Decision Making; Social Enterprise; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

May 15, 2012
Article

Ensuring Quality Cancer Care: A Follow-Up Review of the Institute of Medicine’s 10 Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Cancer Care in America

By: Tracy E. Spinks, Heidi W. Albright, Thomas W. Feeley, Ron Walters, Thomas W. Burke, Thomas Aloia, Eduardo Bruera, Aman Buzdar, Lewis Foxhall, David Hui, Barbara Summers, Alma Rodriguez, Raymond DuBois and Kenneth I. Shine

Responding to growing concerns regarding the safety, quality, and efficacy of cancer care in the United States, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a comprehensive review of cancer care delivery in the US health care system... View Details

Keywords: Cancer; Quality; Cancer Care In The U.S.; Quality Improvement; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; North and Central America

Find at Harvard

Research Summary

Business and Low Income Sectors: The Creation of Economic and Social Value

In the last three decades, innovative commercial solutions have emerged in developing nations focusing on providing effective responses to the hugely underserved needs of low-income populations, both as consumers as well as active participants in productive value... View Details

2023
Article

Towards Bridging the Gaps between the Right to Explanation and the Right to Be Forgotten

By: Himabindu Lakkaraju, Satyapriya Krishna and Jiaqi Ma

The Right to Explanation and the Right to be Forgotten are two important principles outlined to regulate algorithmic decision making and data usage in real-world applications. While the right to explanation allows individuals to request an actionable explanation for an... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Decision Making; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

2020
Working Paper

Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: The Impact of Access and Value

By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis

The goal of this paper is to leverage household-level data to improve food-related policies aimed at increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables (FVs) among low-income households. Currently, several interventions target areas where residents have limited... View Details

Keywords: Food Deserts; Food Access; Food Policy; Causal Inference; Food; Nutrition; Poverty; Government Administration

SSRN

2021
Article

Does Fair Ranking Improve Minority Outcomes? Understanding the Interplay of Human and Algorithmic Biases in Online Hiring

By: Tom Sühr, Sophie Hilgard and Himabindu Lakkaraju

Ranking algorithms are being widely employed in various online hiring platforms including LinkedIn, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. Prior research has demonstrated that ranking algorithms employed by these platforms are prone to a variety of undesirable biases, leading to the... View Details