Publications

Educators

Purchase

2016
Working Paper

Delaying Firearm Purchases Reduces Gun Violence

By: Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra and Christopher Poliquin

Handgun waiting periods are laws that impose a two to seven-day delay between the purchase and delivery of a firearm. While states might institute waiting periods for different reasons (e.g., to allow for background checks), these delays also create a “cooling off”... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Safety; Rights; Laws and Statutes; United States

2015
Working Paper

Multi-Sided Platforms

By: Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright

We study the economic tradeoffs that drive organizations to position themselves closer to or further away from a multi-sided platform (MSP) business model, relative to three traditional alternatives: vertically integrated firms, resellers or input suppliers. These... View Details

Keywords: Two Sided Markets; Reseller; Business Model; Multi-Sided Platforms; Vertical Integration

13 Feb 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 13, 2018

out the motivation to volunteer? Since the importance of such image concerns is normally unobserved, the answer is theoretically unclear, and corresponding empirical evidence is mixed. To help counter this ambiguity, this paper proposes... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Rakesh Khurana

Rakesh Khurana is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is also Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard College, and the Danoff Dean of Harvard College.

Professor... View Details

Keywords: executive search

Research Summary

Overview

Dr. Logg studies how people can improve the accuracy of their judgments and decisions. Her main program of work examines when people are most likely to leverage the power of algorithms to improve their accuracy. Research on what she calls “theory of machine” is... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Judgment; Algorithms; Advice Taking

Article

Ownership Dilemmas: The Case of Finders Versus Landowners

By: Peter DiScioli, Rachel Karpoff and Julian De Freitas

People sometimes disagree about who owns which objects, and these ownership dilemmas can lead to costly disputes. We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying people’s judgments about finder versus landowner cases, in which a person finds an object on someone... View Details

Keywords: Ownership Dilemma; Finders; Psychology And Law; Ownership; Property; Law; Social Psychology

Article

Financial Shame Spirals: How Shame Intensifies Financial Hardship

By: Joe J. Gladstone, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Adam Eric Greenberg and Adam D. Galinsky

Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110)—including data from customer bank account histories and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Hardship; Financial Decision-making; Shame; Guilt; Personal Finance; Financial Condition; Decision Making; Emotions

Purchase

2017
Working Paper

Self-Employment Dynamics and the Returns to Entrepreneurship

By: Eleanor W. Dillon and Christopher T. Stanton

Small business owners and others in self-employment have the option to transition to paid work. If there is initial uncertainty about entrepreneurial earnings, this option increases the expected lifetime value of self-employment relative to pay in a single year. This... View Details

Keywords: Self-employed; Small Business; Business Earnings; Entrepreneurship; Ownership; Compensation and Benefits

April 2014
Article

Between Self-interest and Reciprocity: The Social Bright Side of Self-control Failure

By: Eliran Halali, Yoella Bereby-Meyer and Nachshon Meiran

Despite the importance of reciprocity in many areas of social life, little is known about possible factors affecting it and its interplay with the self-interest motive to maximize one’s own gains. In this study, we examined the role of cognitive control in reciprocal... View Details

Keywords: Cognitive Control; Ego Depletion; Fairness; Trust Game; Ultimatum Game; Reciprocity; Self-control Failure

Article

Leaving It to Chance"—Passive Risk Taking in Everyday Life

By: Ruti Keinan and Yoella Bereby-Meyer

While risk research focuses on actions that put people at risk, this paper introduces the concept of "passive risk"—risk brought on or magnified by inaction. We developed a scale measuring personal tendency for passive risk taking (PRT), validated it using a 150... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Accountability and Inequality in Single-Party Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam and China

Over the past two decades, no two economies have averaged more rapid economic growth than China and Vietnam. But while China's income inequality has risen rapidly over that same time frame, Vietnam's has only grown moderately. Structural and socio-cultural determinants... View Details

Keywords: Income Characteristics; Economic Growth; Policy; Government and Politics; Equality and Inequality; China; Viet Nam

The authors explore the effects of having a large dominant competitor and show conditions under which focusing on a competitive threat, rather than hiding it, can actually help a brand. Through lab and field studies, the authors demonstrate that highlighting a large... View Details

Article

Joy and Rigor in Behavioral Science

By: Hanne K. Collins, Ashley V. Whillans and Leslie K. John

In the past decade, behavioral science has seen the introduction of beneficial reforms to reduce false positive results. Serving as the motivational backdrop for the present research, we wondered whether these reforms might have unintended negative consequences on... View Details

Keywords: Open Science; Pre-registration; Exploration; Confirmation; False Positives; Career Satisfaction; Science; Research; Personal Development and Career; Satisfaction; Diversity

July 2017
Article

What Do Measures of Real-Time Corporate Sales Tell Us About Earnings Surprises and Post-announcement Returns?

By: Kenneth A. Froot, Namho Kang, Gideon Ozik and Ronnie Sadka

We develop real-time proxies of retail corporate sales from multiple sources, including approximately 50 million mobile devices. These measures contain information from both the earnings quarter (within quarter) and the period between that quarter's end and the... View Details

Keywords: Announcements; Business Earnings; Sales; Retail Industry

February 2013
Article

Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field

By: Katie Baca-Motes, Amber Brown, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth A. Keenan and Leif D. Nelson

Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment (N = 2,416) examined the effect... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Marketing

December 2011
Article

How Do Acquirers Retain Successful Target CEOs? The Role of Governance

By: Julie Wulf and Harbir Singh

The resource-based view argues that acquisitions can build competitive advantage partially through retention of valuable human capital of the target firm. However, making commitments to retain and motivate successful top managers is a challenge when contracts are not... View Details

Keywords: Capital; Mergers and Acquisitions; Acquisition; Equity; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Contracts; Performance; Governance; Legal Services Industry