Publications

Article

Tabulated Nonsense? Testing the Validity of the Ethnographic Atlas

By: Duman Bahrami-Rad, Anke Becker and Joseph Henrich

The Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967), an anthropological database, is widely used across the social sciences. The Atlas is a quantified and discretely categorized collection of information gleaned from ethnographies covering more than 1200... View Details

Keywords: Ethnographic Atlas; Validation; Culture; Economic Anthropology

Article

Nudging: Progress to Date and Future Directions

By: John Beshears and Harry Kosowsky

Nudges influence behavior by changing the environment in which decisions are made, without restricting the menu of options and without altering financial incentives. This paper assesses past empirical research on nudging and provides recommendations for future work in... View Details

Keywords: Nudge; Choice Architecture; Behavioral Economics; Behavioral Science; Behavior; Change; Situation or Environment; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making

February 2016
Article

Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships

By: Sen Chai and Willy C. Shih

Partnerships that foster the translation of scientific advances emerging from academic research organizations into commercialized products at private firms are a policy tool that has attracted increased interest. This paper examines empirical data from the Danish... View Details

Keywords: Economic Development; Technological Change; Government Policy; Technological Innovation; Research and Development; Information Technology; Policy; Technology Industry; Denmark

2021
Working Paper

Time and the Value of Data

By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Newsha Ardalani and Marco Iansiti

Managers often believe that collecting more data will continually improve the accuracy of their machine learning models. However, we argue in this paper that when data lose relevance over time, it may be optimal to collect a limited amount of recent data instead of... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of AI; Machine Learning; Non-stationarity; Perishability; Value Depreciation; Analytics and Data Science; Value

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Research Summary

Overview

The Information Age has introduced well recieved opportunities to track performance. Fitbits and Fuelbands show individuals their own performance; service companies including Uber and leading hospitals help pick from drivers or doctors based on how others rate them;... View Details

Keywords: Management Accounting; Performance Measurement; Incentives; Control; Healthcare Industry; Education; Education Industry; Health Industry; Transportation Industry; Energy Industry; Auto Industry; United States; Japan; India

October 2017
Article

The Size of the LGBT Population and the Magnitude of Anti-Gay Sentiment Are Substantially Underestimated

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman, Lucas C. Coffman and Keith M. Marzilli Ericson

We demonstrate that widely used measures of anti-gay sentiment and the size of the LGBT population are misestimated, likely substantially. In a series of online experiments using a large and diverse but non-representative sample, we compare estimates from the standard... View Details

Keywords: LGBTQ; Social Trends ＆ Culture; Economic Theory; Prejudice; Prejudice and Bias; Diversity; Economics; Demographics

December 2016
Article

The Effects of Endowment Size and Strategy Method on Third Party Punishment

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Katherine McAuliffe and David G. Rand

Numerous experiments have shown that people often engage in third-party punishment (3PP) of selfish behavior. This evidence has been used to argue that people respond to selfishness with anger, and get utility from punishing those who mistreat others. Elements of the... View Details

Keywords: Third-party Punishment; Norm-enforcement; Strategy Method; Economic Games; Cooperation; Emotions; Fairness

February 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Womenomics in Japan

By: Boris Groysberg, Mayuka Yamazaki, Nobuo Sato and David Lane

This case profiles Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's vigorous attempts to revive Japan's economy, specifically by advocating for a larger role for women in the economy—not as a matter of social policy or gender equity per se, but as an essential element of any solution to... View Details

Keywords: Gender Equality; Japan; Leadership; Government-business Relations; Shinzo Abe; Economic Growth; Aging Society; Womenomics; Abenomics; Labor Market Discrimination; Workplace Culture; Women And Leadership; Change Management; Leading Change; Gender; Business and Government Relations; Growth and Development; Employment; Working Conditions

Educators

May 2018
Article

Nowcasting Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

By: Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca

Data from digital platforms have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification and enable new measures of how neighborhoods change in close to real time. Combining data on businesses from Yelp with data on gentrification from the Census, Federal Housing... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting Models; Simulation Methods; Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, And Changes; Geographic Location; Local Range; Transition; Analytics and Data Science; Measurement and Metrics; Economic Growth; Forecasting and Prediction

June 28, 2011
Article

Using Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates

By: Katherine L Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

We evaluate the results of a field experiment designed to measure the effect of prompts to form implementation intentions on realized behavioral outcomes. The outcome of interest is influenza vaccination receipt at free on-site clinics offered by a large firm to its... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Nudge; Libertarian Paternalism; Public Health; Flu Shot; Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Cognition and Thinking

August 2020
Article

Do Physician Incentives Increase Patient Medication Adherence?

By: Edward Kong, John Beshears, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian, Kevin Volpp, George Loewenstein, Jonathan Kolstad and James J. Choi

We conducted a randomized experiment (911 primary care practices and 8,935 nonadherent patients) to test the effect of paying physicians for increasing patient medication adherence in three drug classes: diabetes medication, antihypertensives, and statins. We measured... View Details

Keywords: Health Economics; Medication Adherence; Physician Payment Incentives; Primary Care; Quality Improvement; Health Care and Treatment; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior

Research Summary

Overview

Professor MacKay combines theory and measurement to deliver new insights about price competition and consumer preferences. In current and published papers, his research addresses how strategic pricing decisions may be influenced by algorithms, long-term contracts,... View Details

Keywords: Price Effects; Competition Policy; Algorithms; Online Competition; Dynamic Pricing; Beliefs; Preferences; Preference Heterogeneity; Preference Measurement; Competition; Microeconomics; Strategy; Integration; Cooperation

June 2016
Article

Corporate Governance and Executive Compensation for Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Bryan Hong, Zhichuan (Frank) Li and Dylan B. Minor

We link the corporate governance literature in financial economics to the agency cost perspective of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to derive theoretical predictions about the relationship between corporate governance and the existence of executive compensation... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Incentives For CSR; Non-financial Performance Measures; Agency Costs; Board Independence; Institutional Holdings; Managerial Power; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Executive Compensation; Corporate Governance

Alberto Cavallo is the Thomas S. Murphy Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE) unit, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a... View Details

Summer 2021
Article

The World Management Survey at 18: lessons and the way forward

By: Daniela Scur, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen, Renata Lemos and Nicholas Bloom

Understanding how differences in management ‘best practices’ affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics, and public policy. The World Management Survey (WMS) project was born... View Details

Keywords: Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Choice Of Technology; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Management Practices and Processes

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2021
Working Paper

Time Dependency, Data Flow, and Competitive Advantage

By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Marco Iansiti, Newsha Ardalani, Feng Zhu and Karim R. Lakhani

Data is fundamental to machine learning-based products and services and is considered strategic due to its externalities for businesses, governments, non-profits, and more generally for society. It is renowned that the value of organizations (businesses, government... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of AI; Value Of Data; Perishability; Time Dependency; Flow Of Data; Data Strategy; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Strategy; Competitive Advantage

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