Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,149)
- Faculty Publications (244)
- Article
How to Use Heuristics for Differential Privacy
By: Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zhiwei Steven Wu
We develop theory for using heuristics to solve computationally hard problems in differential privacy. Heuristic approaches have enjoyed tremendous success in machine learning, for which performance can be empirically evaluated. However, privacy guarantees cannot be... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
The Impact of the General Data Protection Regulation on Internet Interconnection
By: Ran Zhuo, Bradley Huffaker, KC Claffy and Shane Greenstein
The Internet comprises thousands of independently operated networks, where bilaterally negotiated interconnection agreements determine the flow of data between networks. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict restrictions on... View Details
- Article
Machine Learning Approaches to Facial and Text Analysis: Discovering CEO Oral Communication Styles
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Dan Wang, Natalie A. Carlson and Tarun Khanna
We demonstrate how a novel synthesis of three methods—(1) unsupervised topic modeling of text data to generate new measures of textual variance, (2) sentiment analysis of text data, and (3) supervised ML coding of facial images with a cutting-edge convolutional neural... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy
By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma
In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Social Enterprise; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Information Technology; Ownership; Social Psychology; Trust; Society; Biotechnology Industry; South America; Amazon Basin
- August 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Teaching Note
Sidewalk Labs: Privacy in a City Built from the Internet Up
By: Leslie John and Mitch Weiss
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.
The case serves as a microcosm of issues of digital privacy: the availability of data – personal data in particular – has tremendous potential to improve people’s lives... View Details
The case serves as a microcosm of issues of digital privacy: the availability of data – personal data in particular – has tremendous potential to improve people’s lives... View Details
- Article
Effect of Different Financial Incentive Structures on Promoting Physical Activity Among Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial
By: Chethan Bachireddy, Andrew Joung, Leslie K. John, Francesca Gino, Bradford Tuckfield, Luca Foschini and Katherine L. Milkman
Importance: Few adults engage in recommended levels of physical activity. Financial incentives can promote physical activity, but little is known about how their structure influences their effectiveness; for example, whether incentives are more effective if they are... View Details
- 2019
- Article
History, Micro Data, and Endogenous Growth
By: Ufuk Akcigit and Tom Nicholas
The study of economic growth is concerned with long-run changes, and therefore, historical data should be especially influential in informing the development of new theories. In this review, we draw on the recent literature to highlight areas in which study of history... View Details
- August 2019
- Article
When and How to Diversify—A Multicategory Utility Model for Personalized Content Recommendation
By: Yicheng Song, Nachiketa Sahoo and Elie Ofek
Sometimes we desire change, a break from the same or an opportunity to fulfill different aspects of our needs. Noting that consumers seek variety, several approaches have been developed to diversify items recommended by personalized recommender systems. However,... View Details
- March 2019 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
MoviePass: The 'Get Big Fast' Strategy
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher
In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams from related businesses... View Details
Keywords: Market Entry; Growth Strategy; Profit Vs. Growth; Subscription Business; Cash Burn; Data Analytics; Get-big-fast; Buyer Power; Strategy Implementation; Movie Industry; Racing; Entrepreneurship; Market Entry and Exit; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Value Creation; Disruption; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; United States
- 2019
- Working Paper
Biometric Monitoring, Service Delivery and Misreporting: Evidence from Healthcare in India
By: Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade and Vincent Pons
Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology in hopes of improving the reliability of administrative information and delivering social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric tracking devices in... View Details
- 2019
- Article
Fair Algorithms for Learning in Allocation Problems
By: Hadi Elzayn, Shahin Jabbari, Christopher Jung, Michael J Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zachary Schutzman
Settings such as lending and policing can be modeled by a centralized agent allocating a scarce resource (e.g. loans or police officers) amongst several groups, in order to maximize some objective (e.g. loans given that are repaid, or criminals that are apprehended).... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs
By: Rembrand Koning and John-Paul Ferguson
Does public ownership improve employment diversity? Organizational researchers theorize that increased transparency to regulators and the public should lead firms to conform to legal and social norms—but that social closure and decoupling should preserve the status... View Details
Keywords: IPO; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; United States
- Article
Accuracy First: Selecting a Differential Privacy Level for Accuracy-Constrained ERM
By: Katrina Ligett, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth, Bo Waggoner and Steven Wu
Traditional approaches to differential privacy assume a fixed privacy requirement ϵ for a computation, and attempt to maximize the accuracy of the computation subject to the privacy constraint. As differential privacy is increasingly deployed in practical settings, it... View Details
- 2019
- Article
Big Data
By: John A. Deighton
Big data is defined and distinguished from a mere moment in the “ancient quest to measure.” Specific discontinuities in the practice of information science are identified that, the paper argues, have large consequences for the social order. The infrastructure that runs... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data
By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton
On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details
Keywords: Citizen Science; Creative Commons; Open Data; Open Architecture; Volunteer-based Organization; Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility; 311; Nuclear; Radiation; Crowdsourcing; Bgeigie; Geiger Counters; Kickstarter; Sustainability; Sustainable Business And Innovation; Design; Energy Generation; Social Entrepreneurship; Human Capital; Innovation and Invention; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Information Technology; Business Model; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; Japan; North and Central America; Europe
- October 2018
- Case
Fundraising at St. Camillus Hospital
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
St. Camillus is a fictional non-profit hospital in rural Maine facing a serious budget deficit. As Director of Marketing, Victoria Stern is building a team to modernize the hospital fundraising efforts. An interview with a promising candidate, who is also a digital... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Need for Speed: The Impact of Website Performance on Online Retail
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
The share of e-commerce sales is rapidly increasing and so are the associated losses generated by website outages and slow websites. We leverage novel retail and website performance data to investigate the impact of website performance on online sales. This question is... View Details
- October 2018
- Article
The Operational Value of Social Media Information
By: Ruomeng Cui, Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang
While the value of using social media information has been established in multiple business contexts, the field of operations and supply chain management have not yet explored the possibilities it offers in improving firms' operational decisions. This study attempts to... View Details
- September 2018
- Article
Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia
By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu
Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,... View Details
- Article
Financial Analysis of Pediatric Resident Physician Primary Care Longitudinal Outpatient Experience
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Carole H. Stipelman, Brad Poss, Laura Anne Stetson, Luca Boi, Michael Rogers, Caleb Puzey, Sri Koduri, Vivian S. Lee and Edward B. Clark
Objective
To determine whether residency training represents a net positive or negative cost to academic medical centers, we analyzed the cost of a residency program and clinical productivity of residents and faculty in an outpatient primary care practice with or... View Details
To determine whether residency training represents a net positive or negative cost to academic medical centers, we analyzed the cost of a residency program and clinical productivity of residents and faculty in an outpatient primary care practice with or... View Details