Publications

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2023
Working Paper

How People Use Statistics

By: Pedro Bordalo, John J. Conlon, Nicola Gennaioli, Spencer Yongwook Kwon and Andrei Shleifer

We document two new facts about the distributions of answers in famous statistical problems: they are i) multi-modal and ii) unstable with respect to irrelevant changes in the problem. We offer a model in which, when solving a problem, people represent each hypothesis... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Microeconomics; Mathematical Methods; Behavioral Finance

February 2022
Article

Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and William L. Skimmyhorn

Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan.... View Details

Keywords: Retirement Savings; Automatic Enrollment; Choice Architecture; Nudge; Financial Distress; Retirement; Saving; Borrowing and Debt; Behavior

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June 2005
Article

Currency Returns, Intrinsic Value, and Institutional Investor Flows

By: K. A. Froot and T. Ramadorai

Keywords: Currencies; Exchange Rates; Purchasing Power Parity; Real Exchange Rate; Forecasting and Prediction; Behavioral Finance; Investment Return; Market Transactions; Performance Expectations; Personal Characteristics; Asset Pricing; Financial Services Industry

September 2004
Article

Decomposing the Persistence of International Equity Flows

By: Kenneth A. Froot and J. Tjornhom Donohue

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Equity Investment; Forecasting and Prediction; Behavioral Finance; Stocks; Investment Return; Market Transactions; Performance Expectations; Personal Characteristics; Financial Services Industry

May 2023
Article

Political Ideology and International Capital Allocation

By: Elisabeth Kempf, Mancy Luo, Larissa Schäfer and Margarita Tsoutsoura

Does investors' political ideology shape international capital allocation? We provide evidence from two settings—syndicated corporate loans and equity mutual funds—to show ideological alignment with foreign governments affects the cross-border capital allocation by... View Details

Keywords: Capital Flows; Syndicated Loans; Mutual Funds; Partisanship; Polarization; Elections; Political Ideology; Banks and Banking; Institutional Investing; Behavioral Finance; Decision Choices and Conditions

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24 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 24, 2006

savings, or fertility behavior in African nations. However we do find weak evidence that AIDS has lead to a slow-down in education gains, as measured by youth literacy, and a rise in poverty, as measured by malnutrition. Download working... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

A Smarter Way to Reduce Customer Defections

Companies spend significant sums to acquire customers. Once hooked, marketers protect those investments by attempting to keep patrons happy, engaged, and most of all, loyal. Reducing customer attrition, or "churn" in marketing parlance, often involves offering... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Service

January 1990 (Revised February 1993)
Case

Selling Durable Goods

Examines the pricing policy for a firm that is a monopoly supplier of a durable good. Lowering price over time in an attempt to increase market penetration seems desirable. But doing so may also cause some buyers to postpone their purchases. Describes these... View Details

Keywords: Price; Consumer Behavior; Monopoly

Educators

July 2005
Article

Profit Maximization versus Disadvantageous Inequality in Choice Behavior: The Impact of Self-Categorization

By: S. M. Garcia, A. Tor, M. Bazerman and D. T. Miller

Keywords: Profit; Decision Choices and Conditions; Behavior; Social Psychology

May 2021
Article

The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage

By: Jung Koo Kang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence and Forester Wong

We use novel satellite data that track the number of cars in the parking lots of 92,668 stores for 71 publicly listed U.S. retailers to study the local information advantage of institutional investors. We establish car counts as a timely measure of store-level... View Details

Keywords: Satellite Images; Store-level Performance; Institutional Investors; Local Advantage; Overweighting; Processing Costs; Alternative Data; Big Data; Emerging Technologies; Information; Quality; Institutional Investing; Decision Making; Behavioral Finance; Analytics and Data Science

June 7, 1990
Article

New Trading Practices and the Short-run Predictability of the S&P 500

By: André Perold, Kenneth A. Froot and James F. Gammill Jr.

Keywords: Institutional Investing; Market Efficiency; Equities; Stock Market; Indexing; Asset Pricing; Financial Markets; Investment; Behavioral Finance

November 2023
Article

Brokerage House Initial Public Offerings and Analyst Forecast Quality

By: Mark Bradshaw, Michael Drake, Joseph Pacelli and Brady Twedt

We examine how brokerage firm initial public offerings (IPOs) influence the research quality of sell-side analysts employed by the brokerage. Our main results focus on earnings forecast bias and absolute forecast errors as proxies for research quality. Using a... View Details

Keywords: IPOs; Research Analysts; ＂Brokerage Industry; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Behavior; Outcome or Result

05 Feb 2010
News

Worse than the Boston Sports Media?

Keywords: Arts, Entertainment

01 Jun 2018
News

The Evolution of Modern Pricing Models

behavior of the customers is so vastly different that having the same policy often doesn’t make sense. It’s very much like you’re selling a certain type of product in Japan and China: different markets with different competitors and... View Details

21 Jul 2006
Op-Ed

Enron Jury Sent the Right Message

of corporate fraud, considerations of intent dominate the details of compliance or noncompliance with arcane legal rules. This is the right message to send to the American business community. The behavior that became so widespread and... View Details

Keywords: by Malcolm S. Salter

27 Oct 2017
News

The Best Business Advice I’ve Ever Received

real, and it got easy. And in that one little moment, all of a sudden, I had a pattern of behavior to model. Danny Cho, HBS 2012. I think as new grads think about their next career step, they should really follow their career passion. And... View Details

Web

Rock 100: The Summit - Entrepreneurship

recommended reading lists Hand-picked resources for the questions and concerns raised by the Rock 100 founders at the Summit can be found at the links below: B2B Marketing Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences

By: Hendrik Döpper, Alexander MacKay, Nathan H. Miller and Joel Stiebale

We characterize the evolution of markups for consumer products in the United States from 2006 to 2019. We use detailed data on prices and quantities for products in more than 100 distinct product categories to estimate demand systems with flexible... View Details

Keywords: Market Power; Markups; Demand Estimation; Consumer Products; Retailers; Product; Price; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior