Publications

Educators

31 Jul 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Investment Incentives in Proprietary and Open-Source Two-Sided Platforms

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Gastón Llanes

30 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Fluid Teams and Fluid Tasks: The Impact of Team Familiarity and Variation in Experience

Keywords: by Robert S. Huckman & Bradley R. Staats; Video Game; Web Services

April–June 2022
Other Article

Commentary on 'Causal Decision Making and Causal Eﬀect Estimation Are Not the Same... and Why It Matters'

By: Edward McFowland III

There has been a substantial discussion in various methodological and applied literatures around causal inference; especially in the use of machine learning and statistical models to understand heterogeneity in treatment effects and to make optimal decision... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Treatment Effect Estimation; Treatment Assignment Policy; Human-in-the-loop; Decision Making; Fairness

2012
Article

Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank

By: B. Staats and F. Gino

Sustaining operational productivity in the completion of repetitive tasks is critical to many organizations' success. Yet research points to two different work-design-related strategies for accomplishing this goal: specialization to capture the benefits of repetition... View Details

Keywords: Motivation; Productivity; Specialization; Variety; Work Fragmentation; Boundaries; Performance Productivity; Organizations; Research; Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Opportunities; Market Transactions; Resource Allocation; Performance; Goals and Objectives; Learning

February 2015
Article

Risk, Information, and Incentives in Online Affiliate Marketing

By: Benjamin Edelman and Wesley Brandi

We examine online affiliate marketing programs in which merchants oversee thousands of affiliates they have never met. Some merchants hire outside specialists to set and enforce policies for affiliates, while other merchants ask their ordinary marketing staff to... View Details

Keywords: Affiliate Marketing; Incentives; Fraud; Advertising; Internet and the Web; Marketing Communications; Ethics; Digital Marketing

Keywords: Mihir A. Desai; Corporate, Subsidiary, and Regional Managing Offices; Corporate, Subsidiary, and Regional Managing Offices; Corporate, Subsidiary, and Regional Managing Offices; Corporate, Subsidiary, and Regional Managing Offices

01 Mar 2011
News

Tax and Grow

spending that cash, the economy could benefit from a significant stimulus that, unlike stimulus measures relating to government spending, would stem from decentralized actors responding to private information View Details

24 Feb 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Integrated Reporting and Investor Clientele

Keywords: by George Serafeim; Accounting

August 1, 2025
Article

When to Innovate and When to Imitate

By: Felipe A. Csaszar, Rebecca Karp and Maria Roche

Innovation is often the gold standard for firms looking to grow profits and become leaders in their industries. But given the steep cost of failure, is a relentless pursuit of innovation always advisable? Or might there be some instances when imitation may be a better... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Imitation; Competition

September 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane

In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that... View Details

Keywords: Payment Methods; Mobile Payment; Apple; Banks and Banking; Cooperation; Problems and Challenges; Policy; Digital Platforms; Banking Industry; Australia

Educators

June 2014
Supplement

Chung and Dasgupta: Supplemental Information on Jordan Ramirez and Casey Clark

By: Ian Larkin and Karen Huang

The "Promotion Process at Chung and Dasgupta, LLP" set of cases explores the roles of general and firm-specific human capital in employee performance measurement, feedback, and promotion/compensation decisions. In the cases, a leading law firm must decide whether to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Appraisal; Performance Measurement; Employee Feedback; Motivation; Promotions; Human Capital; Performance Evaluation; Management Systems; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Legal Services Industry; United States; Massachusetts

May 2023
Article

Incentive Effects of Subjective Allocations of Rewards and Penalties

By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin

We examine the incentive effects of subjectivity in allocating tournament-based rewards and punishments. We use data from a company where reward and punishment decisions are based on a combination of objective metrics and subjective performance assessments. Rankings... View Details

Keywords: Subjectivity; Tournament-based Incentives; Rewards; Penalties; Expectancy Theory; Employees; Compensation and Benefits; Management; Decisions; Performance; Measurement and Metrics

Article

Financing Constraints, Home Equity and Selection into Entrepreneurship

By: Thais Laerkholm Jensen, Søren Leth-Petersen and Ramana Nanda

We exploit a mortgage reform that differentially unlocked home equity across the Danish population and study how this impacted selection into entrepreneurship. We find that increased entry was concentrated among entrepreneurs whose firms were founded in industries... View Details

Keywords: Mortgage Reform; Home Equity; Financing Constraints; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Mortgages; Denmark

25 Feb 2015
News

Why the Gap Between Worker Pay and Productivity Is So Problematic

April 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Case

TD Canada Trust (A): The Green and the Red

By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan

The case series illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Commercial Banking; Profit; Balanced Scorecard; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Banking Industry; Canada

Educators

01 Dec 2018
News

Competencies and Credentials

I realized this is going to be absolutely transformational. At the same time, technology is enabling more flexible forms of work, but in many cases without the benefits associated with traditional jobs. These two trends could... View Details

2025
Working Paper

CEO-Firm Matches and Productivity in 42 Countries

By: Amanda Dahlstrand, Dávid László, Helena Schweiger, Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

Firms are key to economic development, and CEOs are key to firm productivity. Are firms in countries at varying stages of development led by the right CEOs, and if not, why? We develop a parsimonious measure of CEO time use that allows us to differentiate CEOs into... View Details

Keywords: Training; Management Skills; Economic Growth; Leadership Development

January 2010
Article

Open vs. Closed Innovation: A Model of Discovery and Divergence

By: Esteve Almirall and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

When is open innovation superior to closed innovation? Through a formal simulation model, we show that an open approach to innovation allows the firm to discover combinations of product features that would be hard to envision under integration. However, when partners... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Partners and Partnerships; Goals and Objectives; Cost vs Benefits; Integration; Product