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- Faculty Publications (185)
Signals
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- March 2016
- Article
Dividends as Reference Points: A Behavioral Signaling Approach
By: Malcolm Baker, Brock Mendel and Jeffrey Wurgler
We outline a dividend signaling model that features investors who are averse to dividend cuts. Managers with strong unobservable cash earnings separate by paying high dividends but retain enough to be likely not to fall short next period. The model is consistent with a... View Details
Keywords: Investment
- Article
Third-party Punishment as a Costly Signal of Trustworthiness
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Paul Bloom and David G. Rand
Third-party punishment (TPP), in which unaffected observers punish selfishness, promotes cooperation by deterring defection. But why should individuals choose to bear the costs of punishing? We present a game theoretic model of TPP as a costly signal of... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Cloaked Trading
By: Lauren Cohen, Dong Lou and Christopher J. Malloy
Using a novel, proprietary database of micro-level trading activities by asset managers, we show strong evidence of asset managers engaging in strategic trading in order to “cloak” their most valuable trades. This takes the form, for instance, of a manager who sells... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Paying (for) Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Xiaosheng Mu and Alexander Peysakhovich
Human information processing is often modeled as costless Bayesian inference.
However, research in psychology shows that attention is a computationally costly and potentially limited resource. We study a Bayesian individual for whom computing posterior beliefs is... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
"Level II" Negotiation Strategies: Advance Your Interests by Helping to Solve Their Internal Problems
Many negotiators have constituencies that must formally or informally approve an agreement. Traditionally, it is the responsibility of each negotiator to manage the internal conflicts and constituencies on his or her own side. Far less familiar are the many valuable... View Details
- November 2015
- Article
Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel
Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details
- Article
Chris Argyris (1923–2013)
By: Amy C. Edmondson
Chris Argyris, a pioneer in the fields of organization development, organizational learning, and action science, passed away on November 16, 2013. Argyris was born in Newark, New Jersey, on July 16, 1923, to Greek immigrant parents, and grew up in Irvington, New... View Details
- May 2015
- Article
Admitting Mistakes: Home Country Effect on the Reliability of Restatement Reporting
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Aida Sijamic Wahid and Gwen Yu
We study the frequency of restatements by foreign firms listed on U.S. exchanges. We find that the restatement rate of U.S. listed foreign firms is significantly lower than that of comparable U.S. firms and that the difference depends on the firm's home country... View Details
- March 2015
- Article
Signaling to Partially Informed Investors in the Newsvendor Model
By: William Schmidt, Vishal Gaur, Richard Lai and Ananth Raman
We investigate a puzzling phenomenon in which firms make investment decisions that purposefully do not maximize expected profits. Using an extension to the newsvendor model, we focus on a relatively common scenario in which the firm's investor has imperfect information... View Details
- February 2015
- Case
CLP: Powering Asia
By: George Serafeim, Rebecca Henderson and Dawn Lau
Richard Lancaster, taking over from Andrew Brandler, was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CLP Holdings Ltd., one of the leading power companies in Asia, with operations in China, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Australia, and India, and an energy portfolio spanning coal,... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Signaling without Certification: The Critical Role of Civil Society Scrutiny
By: Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell and Michael W. Toffel
In response to stakeholders' growing concerns, companies are joining voluntary environmental programs to signal their superior environmental management capabilities. In contrast to the literature's focus on certification programs that require a third-party audit, we... View Details
Keywords: United Nations; Labor Standards; Supplier Relationship; Procurement; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Quality And Safety; Risk; Globalization; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Working Conditions; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Reputation
- July–August 2014
- Article
Becoming a First-Class Noticer: How to Spot and Prevent Ethical Failures in Your Organization
By: Max Bazerman
We'd like to think that no smart, upstanding manager would ever overlook or turn a blind eye to threats or wrongdoing that ultimately imperil his or her business. Yet it happens all the time. We fall prey to obstacles that obscure or drown out important signals that... View Details
- June 2014
- Article
The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity
By: Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino and Anat Keinan
We examine how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Handshaking Promotes Cooperative Dealmaking
By: Juliana Schroeder, Jane Risen, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton
Humans use subtle sources of information—like nonverbal behavior—to determine whether to act cooperatively or antagonistically when they negotiate. Handshakes are particularly consequential nonverbal gestures in negotiations because people feel comfortable initiating... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Better Deals Through Level II Strategies: Advance Your Interests by Helping to Solve Their Internal Problems
Many negotiators have constituencies that must formally or informally approve an agreement. Traditionally, it is the responsibility of each negotiator to manage the internal conflicts and constituencies on his or her own side. Far less familiar are the many valuable... View Details
- Article
Delayed-Response Strategies in Repeated Games with Observation Lags
By: Drew Fudenberg, Yuhta Ishii and Scott Duke Kominers
We extend the folk theorem of repeated games to two settings in which players' information about others' play arrives with stochastic lags. In our first model, signals are almost-perfect if and when they do arrive, that is, each player either observes an almost-perfect... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Children Develop a Veil of Fairness
By: Alex Shaw, Natalia Montinari, Marco Piovesan, Kristina Olson, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton
Previous research suggests that children develop an increasing concern with fairness over the course of development. Research with adults suggests that the concern with fairness has at least two distinct components: a desire to be fair and a desire to signal to others... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel
Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details
- June 2013
- Article
Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns
By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson
We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the... View Details
- June 2013
- Article
Signals across Multiple Networks: How Venture Capital and Alliance Networks Affect Interorganizational Collaboration
By: Umit Ozmel, Jeffrey J. Reuer and Ranjay Gulati
In this paper, we examine the contingent effects of signals generated by different types of networks on new ventures' formation of future strategic alliances. We argue that the signaling value of a given tie in reducing adverse selection is more pronounced when another... View Details