Publications

April 1996 (Revised June 1996)
Background Note

Cleveland Turnaround (C), The: Facts and Figures

By: James E. Austin and Jaan Elias

Traces the Cleveland community's efforts to move the city from economic, social, and political crisis in the late 1970s into revitalization and progress in the 1980s and 1990s. Special attention is given to the role of business leaders and the public-private... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Analytics and Data Science; Economic Growth; Business and Community Relations; Cleveland

Web

Career Risks and Professional Growth: Finding a Fulfilling Career with Paige Arnof-Fenn (MBA 1991) - Recruiting

convince recruiters that my analytical background gave me a unique advantage as a marketer. Persistence and self-belief became my greatest allies. After HBS, I stepped into brand management roles at Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, where I... View Details

16 Nov 2011
News

Are Humans Cost-Effective?

to unscramble “Scrambled State Capitals,” a presumably brute-force analytical exercise that should play to Watson’s strengths. Indeed, in a similar category, “The Northernmost Capital City,” Watson ran the table, answering all five... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

Web

Tools & Services | Information Technology

about web design, implementation, management, and support at HBS. Data, Reporting, & Analytics Explore IT supported reporting and analytics platforms for HBS community information assets. Deliver We ensure... View Details

2022
Article

Which Explanation Should I Choose? A Function Approximation Perspective to Characterizing Post hoc Explanations

By: Tessa Han, Suraj Srinivas and Himabindu Lakkaraju

A critical problem in the field of post hoc explainability is the lack of a common foundational goal among methods. For example, some methods are motivated by function approximation, some by game theoretic notions, and some by obtaining clean visualizations. This... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Decision Choices and Conditions; Analytics and Data Science

2022
Article

Fairness via Explanation Quality: Evaluating Disparities in the Quality of Post hoc Explanations

By: Jessica Dai, Sohini Upadhyay, Ulrich Aivodji, Stephen Bach and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As post hoc explanation methods are increasingly being leveraged to explain complex models in high-stakes settings, it becomes critical to ensure that the quality of the resulting explanations is consistently high across all subgroups of a population. For instance, it... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Mathematical Methods; Research; Analytics and Data Science

Purchase

2020
Working Paper

Is Accounting Useful for Forecasting GDP Growth? A Machine Learning Perspective

By: Srikant Datar, Apurv Jain, Charles C.Y. Wang and Siyu Zhang

We provide a comprehensive examination of whether, to what extent, and which accounting variables are useful for improving the predictive accuracy of GDP growth forecasts. We leverage statistical models that accommodate a broad set of (341) variables—outnumbering the... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Elastic Net; GDP Growth; Machine Learning; Macro Forecasting; Short Fat Data; Accounting; Economic Growth; Forecasting and Prediction; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

January 2018
Article

Big Data and Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life

By: Edward L. Glaeser, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Luca and Nikhil Naik

New, "big" data sources allow measurement of city characteristics and outcome variables at higher frequencies and finer geographic scales than ever before. However, big data will not solve large urban social science questions on its own. Big data has the most value for... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Urban Scope; City

25 Feb 2020
News

How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Business

algorithms to analyze radiology scans, applying quantitative analytics to marketing movies, and analyzing sales data from an online flash retail site to develop a better pricing model. The teaching and research of HBS faculty reflect the... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

Melody Koh

was a Product Manager at Fab.com leading marketing & analytics products and the founder/CEO of a seed-funded wine subscription e-commerce service. Melody was also a venture investor at Time Warner’s strategic VC group and was one of six... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital

2025
Article

Statistical Inference for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Discovered by Generic Machine Learning in Randomized Experiments

By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li

Researchers are increasingly turning to machine learning (ML) algorithms to investigate causal heterogeneity in randomized experiments. Despite their promise, ML algorithms may fail to accurately ascertain heterogeneous treatment effects under practical settings with... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

January 2021
Article

Using Models to Persuade

By: Joshua Schwartzstein and Adi Sunderam

We present a framework where "model persuaders" influence receivers’ beliefs by proposing models that organize past data to make predictions. Receivers are assumed to find models more compelling when they better explain the data, fixing receivers’ prior beliefs. Model... View Details

Keywords: Model Persuasion; Analytics and Data Science; Forecasting and Prediction; Mathematical Methods; Framework

19 Nov 2014
News

The Power of Yes

change,” he summarizes.) Charged with overseeing a $100 million capital fund drive, Dichter wanted to explore the impulses behind people’s giving—or not giving. He wanted to dig deeper into what he saw as a conflict between the dominant, purely View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

25 Apr 2012
What Do You Think?

How Will the “Age of Big Data” Affect Management?

the Big Thinker." Gerald Nanninga cautioned us that "the big risk is that it gives executives a false sense of comfort." Clifford Francis Baker added, "My concern is primarily focused on the possibility of complacency data derived from data View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

2013
Chapter

Privacy Breach Analysis in Social Networks

By: Frank Nagle

Over the past 5–10 years, online social networks have rapidly expanded, and as of March 2012 the largest online social network, Facebook, had over 901 million active members. The wealth of information users post in their social network profiles, as well as the... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media; Cybersecurity; Analytics and Data Science

Purchase

2021
Working Paper

The Value of Data and Its Impact on Competition

By: Marco Iansiti

Common regulatory perspective on the relationship between data, value, and competition in online platforms has increasingly centered on the volume of data accumulated by incumbent firms. This view posits the existence of "data network effects," where more data leads to... View Details

Keywords: Online Platforms; Data Network Effects; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Competition; Digital Platforms

SSRN

June 2022
Article

The Use and Misuse of Patent Data: Issues for Finance and Beyond

By: Josh Lerner and Amit Seru

Patents and citations are powerful tools for understanding innovation increasingly used in financial economics (and management research more broadly). Biases may result, however, from the interactions between the truncation of patents and citations and the changing... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Analytics and Data Science; Corporate Finance; Research