Publications

2011
Article

Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals

By: Rafael Di Tella

We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption

Research Summary

Intra-Household Decision Making

Professor Ashraf's research in intra-household decision making examines how households make financial and health decisions, particularly in the presence of asymmetric information or benefits.

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23 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Sponsorship Programs Could Actually Widen the Gender Gap

FabioFilzi Key aspects of corporate sponsorship programs, while designed to advance women’s careers, may end up widening the gender gap rather than narrowing it, according to new experimental research. “We’re not trying to say that... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

February 2015
Article

'Open' Disclosure of Innovations, Incentives and Follow-on Reuse: Theory on Processes of Cumulative Innovation and a Field Experiment in Computational Biology

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Most of society's innovation systems―academic science, the patent system, open source, etc.―are "open" in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Cumulative Innovation; Incentives; Search; Disclosure And Access; Knowledge Sharing; Motivation and Incentives; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

SSRN

02 Aug 2020
What Do You Think?

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

Korrawin SUMMING UP Will Digital Experimentation Take Hold in Industies Outside High Tech? The several responses to this month’s column generally were favorable to the notion that experimentation is gaining... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

Research Summary

Microfinance

"Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines." (with Dean Karlan and Wesley Yin) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121, no. 2, 2006.
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Article

Learning by Thinking: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning

By: Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Bradley R. Staats

It is common wisdom that practice makes perfect. And, in fact, we find evidence that when given a choice between practicing a task and reflecting on their previously accumulated practice, most people opt for the former. We argue in this paper that this preference is... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Cognition and Thinking; Practice; Experience and Expertise

18 Nov 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Financial Development and Technology Diffusion

Keywords: by Diego Comin & Ramana Nanda

2023
Working Paper

The Link Between Integrative Bargaining and Leadership Evaluations

By: Julian J. Zlatev and Francis J. Flynn

We draw from implicit leadership theory and the dual concern theory of conflict resolution to posit a link between negotiation style and leadership evaluations. Specifically, we propose that individuals who are more skilled at integrative, but not distributive,... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; Leadership; Negotiation; Conflict and Resolution; Performance Evaluation

Research Summary

Health

"Can Higher Prices Stimulate Product Use? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Zambia." (with James Berry and Jesse Shapiro) August 2008, American Economic Review, December 2010.View Details

2023
Working Paper

Complexity and Time

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

We provide experimental evidence that core intertemporal choice anomalies -- including extreme short-run impatience, structural estimates of present bias, hyperbolicity and transitivity violations -- are driven by complexity rather than time or risk preferences. First,... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Motivation and Incentives

Purchase

Article

Large-Scale Field Experiment Shows Null Effects of Team Demographic Diversity on Outsiders' Willingness to Support the Team

By: Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Rosanna K. Smith

Demographic diversity in the United States is rising, and increasingly, work is conducted in teams. These co-occurring phenomena suggest that it might be increasingly common for work to be conducted by demographically diverse teams. But to date, in spite of copious... View Details

Keywords: Field Experiment; Groups and Teams; Demographics; Diversity; Attitudes

February 2024
Article

Are Many Sex/Gender Differences Really Power Differences?

By: Adam D. Galinsky, Aurora Turek, Grusha Agarwal, Eric M. Anicich, Derek D. Rucker, Hannah Riley Bowles, Nira Liberman, Chloe Levin and Joe C Magee

This research addresses the long-standing debate about the determinants of sex/gender differences. Evolutionary theorists trace many sex/gender differences back to natural selection and sex-specific adaptations. Sociocultural and biosocial theorists, in contrast,... View Details

Keywords: Gender; Genetics; Power and Influence; Social Issues

May 2018
Article

Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations

By: Christine L. Exley

Do monetary incentives encourage volunteering? Or, do they introduce concerns about appearing greedy and crowd out the motivation to volunteer? Since the importance of such image concerns is normally unobserved, the answer is theoretically unclear, and corresponding... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Image Motivation; Volunteer; Prosocial Behavior; Altruism; Gender; Reputations; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Perception; Reputation

Research Summary

The Transparency of Ethical Behavior

(with Max Bazerman, Karim Kassam, and Neeru Paharia)
This research analyzes how unethical behavior is viewed when performed... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Complexity and Hyperbolic Discounting

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

A large literature shows that people discount financial rewards hyperbolically instead of exponentially. While discounting of money has been questioned as a measure of time preferences, it continues to be highly relevant in empirical practice and predicts a wide range... View Details

Keywords: Hyperbolic Discounting; Present Bias; Bounded Rationality; Cognitive Uncertainty; Behavioral Finance

09 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 9

States, and one deceased donor can save numerous lives by providing multiple organs. Nevertheless, most Americans are not registered organ donors despite the relative ease of becoming one. We study in the laboratory an experimental game... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2018
Article

We Ask Men to Win & Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding

By: Dana Kanze, Laura Huang, Mark Conley and E. Tory Higgins

Male entrepreneurs are known to raise higher levels of funding than their female counterparts, but the underlying mechanism for this funding disparity remains contested. Drawing upon Regulatory Focus Theory, we propose that the gap originates with a gender bias in the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Finance; Gender; Prejudice and Bias