Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,118)
- Faculty Publications (549)
- September 2022
- Article
Regulatory Spillover and Workplace Racial Inequality
By: Letian Zhang
This paper suggests that affirmative action bans in the U.S. public sector may influence racial inequality in the private sector. Since the 1990s, nine states have banned affirmative action practice in public universities and state governments. Though these bans have... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Slowly Varying Regression under Sparsity
By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Michael Lingzhi Li and Omar Skali Lami
We consider the problem of parameter estimation in slowly varying regression models with sparsity constraints. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer optimization problem and demonstrate that it can be reformulated exactly as a binary convex optimization problem... View Details
Keywords: Mathematical Methods
- August 2022
- Supplement
Zalora: Data-Driven Pricing Recommendations
By: Ayelet Israeli
This exercise can be used in conjunction with the main case "Zalora: Data-Driven Pricing" to facilitate class discussion without requiring data analysis from the students. Instead, the exercise presents reports that were created by the data science team to answer the... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Pricing Algorithms; Dynamic Pricing; Ecommerce; Pricing Strategy; Pricing And Revenue Management; Apparel; Singapore; Startup; Demand Estimation; Data Analysis; Data Analytics; Exercise; Price; Internet and the Web; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Singapore
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Effect of Employee Lateness and Absenteeism on Store Performance
By: Caleb Kwon and Ananth Raman
We empirically analyze the effects of employee lateness and absenteeism on store performance by examining 25.5 million employee shift timecards covering more than 100,000 employees across more than 500 U.S. retail grocery store locations over a four year time period.... View Details
- August 9, 2022
- Article
Preparing Sales for a Changing Economy: Part 1
Companies spend more per capita on sales training than any other function, but the return on investment is disappointing. One recent estimate indicates “that 85-90% of sales training fails to translate into a lasting improvement in productivity.” A major reason is... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Data Poisoning Attacks on Off-Policy Evaluation Methods
By: Elita Lobo, Harvineet Singh, Marek Petrik, Cynthia Rudin and Himabindu Lakkaraju
Off-policy Evaluation (OPE) methods are a crucial tool for evaluating policies in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, where exploration is often infeasible, unethical, or expensive. However, the extent to which such methods can be trusted under adversarial threats... View Details
- Article
The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market
By: Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni
We estimate a structural model of broker choice to quantitatively decompose the value that institutional investors attach to broker services. Studying over 300 million institutional equity trades, we find that investors are sensitive to both explicit and implicit... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Towards Robust Off-Policy Evaluation via Human Inputs
By: Harvineet Singh, Shalmali Joshi, Finale Doshi-Velez and Himabindu Lakkaraju
Off-policy Evaluation (OPE) methods are crucial tools for evaluating policies in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, where direct deployment is often infeasible, unethical, or expensive. When deployment environments are expected to undergo changes (that is, dataset... View Details
- July 2022
- Supplement
Solution for E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (A): Estimating Sales
By: Ayelet Israeli
Keywords: Data Analysis; Data Analytics; CPG; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Estimation; Online Channel; Retail Analytics; Retail; Retailing Industry; Data; Data Sharing; Bricks And Mortar; Ecommerce; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Sales; Goods and Commodities; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- July 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Vicky Tsai and Tatcha: Confronting Stereotypes
By: Geoffrey Jones and Veronica Tong
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 323-007. This case examines the career of Vicky Tsai, the creator of San Francisco-based TATCHA, a Japanese-themed luxury beauty brand launched in 2009. It explores how Tsai developed the concept, assembled management, and successfully... View Details
- July 2022
- Article
Countercyclical Prudential Buffers and Bank Risk-taking
By: Manuel Illueca, Lars Norden, Joseph Pacelli and Gregory F. Udell
We investigate the effects of countercyclical prudential buffers on bank risk-taking. We exploit the introduction of dynamic loan loss provisioning in Spain, mandating that banks use historical average loss rates in their estimation of loan loss provisions. We find... View Details
- July 2022
- Article
Estimating Spillovers from Publicly Funded R&D: Evidence from the US Department of Energy
By: Kyle Myers and Lauren Lanahan
We quantify the magnitude of R&D spillovers created by grants to small firms from the US Department of Energy. Our empirical strategy leverages variation due to state-specific matching policies, and we develop a new approach to measuring both geographic and... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Energy; R＆D; Grants; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Patents; Performance; United States
- 2022
- Working Paper
Measuring the Tolerance of the State: Theory and Application to Protest
By: Veli Andirin, Yusuf Neggers, Mehdi Shadmehr and Jesse M. Shapiro
We develop a measure of a regime's tolerance for an action by its citizens. We ground our measure in an economic model and apply it to the setting of political protest. In the model, a regime anticipating a protest can take a costly action to repress it. We define the... View Details
- June 2022
- Article
The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb and the Accommodation Industry
By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin
We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers—peer hosts and hotels—who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from major... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Are Experts Blinded by Feasibility?: Experimental Evidence from a NASA Robotics Challenge
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Zoe Szajnfarber, Jason Crusan, Michael Menietti and Karim R. Lakhani
Resource allocation decisions play a dominant role in shaping a firm’s technological trajectory and competitive advantage. Recent work indicates that innovative firms and scientific institutions tend to exhibit an anti-novelty bias when evaluating new projects and... View Details
- Article
Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?
By: Samuel Antill
In U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of... View Details
- Article
How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?
By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang
We explain when and how staggered difference-in-differences regression estimators, commonly applied to assess the impact of policy changes, are biased. These biases are likely to be relevant for a large portion of research settings in finance, accounting, and law that... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
On the Estimation of Demand-Based Asset Pricing Models
A growing literature uses portfolio holdings data to quantify the impact of investor demand on equilibrium prices via counterfactual experiments. The key parameter in relating demand and equilibrium prices is investors’ elasticity of demand with respect to the price.... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
A Linear Panel Model with Heterogeneous Coefficients and Variation in Exposure
By: Jesse M. Shapiro and Liyang Sun
Linear panel models featuring unit and time fixed effects appear in many areas of empirical economics. An active literature studies the interpretation of the ordinary least squares estimator of the model, commonly called the two-way fixed effects (TWFE) estimator, in... View Details
- April–June 2022
- Other Article
Commentary on 'Causal Decision Making and Causal Effect Estimation Are Not the Same... and Why It Matters'
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