Publications

Educators

2014
Other Unpublished Work

No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Kelsey Jack

A substantial body of research investigates the effect of pay for performance in firms, yet less is known about the effect of non-financial rewards, especially in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Non-monetary Rewards; Intrinsic Motivation; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Motivation and Incentives

April, 2023
Article

Reducing Information Barriers to Solar Adoption: Experimental Evidence from India

By: Meera Mahadevan, Robyn C. Meeks and Takashi Yamano

Off-grid solar technologies hold promise for unelectrified and low-quality electricity settings; however, their adoption remains low. Important barriers to adoption, such as incomplete information remain relatively unexplored in developing countries. In collaboration... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Renewable Energy; Knowledge Sharing; Developing Countries and Economies; India

2011
Working Paper

Better-reply Dynamics in Deferred Acceptance Games

In this paper we address the question of learning in a two-sided matching mechanism that utilizes the deferred acceptance algorithm. We consider a repeated matching game where at each period agents observe their match and have the opportunity to revise their strategy... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Marketplace Matching; Outcome or Result; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods; Strategy

What do we notice and how does this affect what we learn and come to believe? I present a model of an agent who learns to make forecasts on the basis of readily available information, but is selective as to which information he attends to: he chooses whether to... View Details

07 Oct 2015
HBS Seminar

Florian Ederer, Assistant Professor of Economics, Yale School of Management

23 Aug 2010
News

Seven Truths about Change to Lead By and Live By

December 2014
Article

No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and B. Kelsey Jack

A substantial body of research investigates the effect of pay for performance in firms, yet less is known about the effect of non-financial rewards, especially in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Non-monetary Rewards; Intrinsic Motivation; Motivation and Incentives; Employees; Service Industry; Health Industry

Find at Harvard

December 2024
Article

Respect for Improvements and Comparative Statics in Matching Markets

By: Scott Duke Kominers

One of the oldest results in the theory of two-sided matching is the entry comparative static, which shows that under the Gale–Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm, adding a new agent to one side of the market makes all the agents on the other side weakly... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Market Design

October 1997
Article

Does Competition Kill Corruption?

By: Christopher Bliss and Rafael Di Tella

Corrupt agents (officials or gangsters) exact money from firms. Corruption affects the number of firms in a free-entry equilibrium. The degree of deep competition in the economy increases with lower overhead costs relative to profits and with a tendency toward similar... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Crime and Corruption

Find at Harvard

January 1991 (Revised March 1996)
Case

Profiling at National Mutual (A)

This case series describes a company grappling with organizational change through information technology. National Mutual Life Association vies for Australian insurance industry leadership with its long-time competitor. It has purchased an expert system called Client... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology; Insurance Industry; Australia

Educators

May 2024
Article

True Costs of Uterine Artery Embolization: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing in Interventional Radiology Over a 3-Year Period

By: Julia C. Bulman, Nicole H. Kim, Robert S. Kaplan, Sarah Schroeppel DeBacker, Olga R. Brook and Ammar Sarwar

The study used time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) to estimate the costs to perform uterine artery embolization (UAE). Utilization times for patients undergoing outpatient UAE for fibroids or adenomyosis were captured from electronic health record timestamps and... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

February 2011 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Countrywide plc

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott

One of the world's leading investors in distressed companies, Oaktree Capital Management, is contemplating a "loan to own" investment in the debt of Countrywide plc, a financially troubled residential real estate agent based in the U.K. Only sixteen months earlier,... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Financial Crisis; Capital Structure; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Management; Investment; Real Estate Industry; United Kingdom

Educators

13 May 2020
Video

Cas Coovadia

Cas Coovadia, the long-running Managing Director of the Banking Association South Africa, discusses his transition from being a political activist opposing banks during the era of apartheid, into a strong... View Details

Research Summary

Housing Markets with Contingencies

We model a real-estate market with three types of agents: regular buyers and sellers, and homeowners, who are agents who want to sell their current home only if they can buy another one. On the one hand, our model is a counterpart of the Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez... View Details

March 2011
Supplement

Countrywide plc (CW)

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott

One of the world's leading investors in distressed companies, Oaktree Capital Management is contemplating a "loan to own" investment in the debt f Countrywide plc, a financially troubled residential real estate agent based in the U.K. Only sixteen months earlier,... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Restructuring; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Assets; Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Investment Portfolio; Crisis Management; Strategy; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; United Kingdom

16 Oct 2013
HBS Seminar

Minjae Song, University of Rochester

2010
Working Paper

Agency Revisited

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber

The article presents a comprehensive overview of the principal-agent model that emphasizes the role of trust in the agency relationship. The analysis demonstrates that the legal remedy for breach of duty can result in a full-information efficient outcome eliminating... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Contracts; Agency Theory; Mathematical Methods; Behavior; Trust

July 2003
Article

Probabilistic Representation of Complexity

By: Nabil I Al-Najjar, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Emre Ozdenoren

We study individuals' behavior in an environment that is deterministic, but too complex to permit tractable deterministic representation. Under mild conditions, behavior is represented by a unique probabilistic model in which the agent's inability to think through all... View Details

Keywords: Complexity; Behavior; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Planning