Filter Results:
(322)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(322)
- News (19)
- Research (273)
- Events (6)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (177)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(322)
- News (19)
- Research (273)
- Events (6)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (177)
- Article
The Social Utility of Feature Creep
By: Debora V. Thompson and Michael I. Norton
Previous research shows that consumers frequently choose products with too many features that they later find difficult to use. Our research shows that this seemingly suboptimal behavior may in fact confer benefits when factoring in the social context of consumption.... View Details
Keywords: Impression Management; Social Influence; Conspicuous Consumption; Signaling; Product Features; Consumer Behavior; Information Technology; Experience and Expertise; Status and Position
Thompson, Debora V., and Michael I. Norton. "The Social Utility of Feature Creep." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 48, no. 3 (June 2011): 555–565.
- 2023
- Working Paper
How People Use Statistics
By: Pedro Bordalo, John J. Conlon, Nicola Gennaioli, Spencer Yongwook Kwon and Andrei Shleifer
We document two new facts about the distributions of answers in famous statistical problems: they are i) multi-modal and ii) unstable with respect to irrelevant changes in the problem. We offer a model in which, when solving a problem, people represent each hypothesis... View Details
Bordalo, Pedro, John J. Conlon, Nicola Gennaioli, Spencer Yongwook Kwon, and Andrei Shleifer. "How People Use Statistics." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 31631, August 2023.
- October 2014
- Article
Industrial Policy and the Creation of New Industries: Evidence from Brazil's Bioethanol Industry
By: Santiago Mingo and Tarun Khanna
Industrial policy programs are frequently used by governments to stimulate economic activity in particular sectors of the economy. This study explores how an industrial policy program can affect the creation and evolution of an industry and, ultimately, the long-term... View Details
Keywords: Economic Sectors; Policy; Economic Growth; Government and Politics; Energy Sources; Green Technology Industry; Energy Industry; Brazil
Mingo, Santiago, and Tarun Khanna. "Industrial Policy and the Creation of New Industries: Evidence from Brazil's Bioethanol Industry." Industrial and Corporate Change 23, no. 5 (October 2014): 1229–1260.
- December 2022
- Article
Fostering Perceptions of Authenticity via Sensitive Self-Disclosure
By: Li Jiang, Leslie K. John, Reihane Boghrati and Maryam Kouchaki
Leaders’ perceived authenticity—the sense that leaders are acting in accordance with their “true self”—is associated with positive outcomes for both employees and organizations alike. How might leaders foster this impression? We show that sensitive self-disclosure, in... View Details
Keywords: Authenticity; Weaknesses; Self-disclosure; Leaders; Impression Management; Leadership Style; Motivation and Incentives
Jiang, Li, Leslie K. John, Reihane Boghrati, and Maryam Kouchaki. "Fostering Perceptions of Authenticity via Sensitive Self-Disclosure." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 28, no. 4 (December 2022): 898–915.
- November 2019
- Article
Procedural Justice and the Risks of Consumer Voting
By: Tami Kim, Leslie John, Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton
Firms are increasingly giving consumers the vote. Eight studies demonstrate that when firms empower consumers to vote, consumers infer a series of implicit promises—even in the absence of explicit promises. We identify three implicit promises to which consumers react... View Details
Keywords: Consumer Empowerment; Procedural Justice; Promises; Customer Relationship Management; Voting; Perception; Fairness; Risk Management
Kim, Tami, Leslie John, Todd Rogers, and Michael I. Norton. "Procedural Justice and the Risks of Consumer Voting." Management Science 65, no. 11 (November 2019): 5234–5251.
- 2015
- Working Paper
Measurement Errors of Expected-Return Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital
Despite their popularity as proxies of expected returns, the implied cost of capital's (ICC) measurement error properties are relatively unknown. Through an in-depth analysis of a popular implementation of ICCs by Gebhardt, Lee, and Swaminathan (2001) (GLS), I show... View Details
Wang, Charles C.Y. "Measurement Errors of Expected-Return Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-098, May 2013. (Revised February 2015.)
- 2008
- Working Paper
Rethinking the Role of History in Law & Economics: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927
By: David A. Moss and Jonathan B. Lackow
In the study of law and economics, there is a danger that historical inferences from theory may infect historical tests of theory. It is imperative, therefore, that historical tests always involve a vigorous search not only for confirming evidence, but for... View Details
Keywords: Economic History; Decision Choices and Conditions; Government Legislation; Law; Media and Broadcasting Industry
Moss, David A., and Jonathan B. Lackow. "Rethinking the Role of History in Law & Economics: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 09-008, August 2008.
- Article
Behavioral and Neural Representations en route to Intuitive Action Understanding
By: Leyla Tarhan, Julian De Freitas and Talia Konkle
When we observe another person’s actions, we process many kinds of information—from how their body moves to the intention behind their movements. What kinds of information underlie our intuitive understanding about how similar actions are to each other? To address this... View Details
Keywords: Action Perception; Intuitive Similarity; Multi-arrangement; fMRI; Representational Similarity Analysis; Behavior; Perception
Tarhan, Leyla, Julian De Freitas, and Talia Konkle. "Behavioral and Neural Representations en route to Intuitive Action Understanding." Neuropsychologia 163 (December 2021).
- Article
Optimality Bias in Moral Judgment
By: Julian De Freitas and Samuel G.B. Johnson
We often make decisions with incomplete knowledge of their consequences. Might people nonetheless expect others to make optimal choices, despite this ignorance? Here, we show that people are sensitive to moral optimality: that people hold moral agents accountable... View Details
Keywords: Moral Judgment; Lay Decision Theory; Theory Of Mind; Causal Attribution; Moral Sensibility; Decision Making
De Freitas, Julian, and Samuel G.B. Johnson. "Optimality Bias in Moral Judgment." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 79 (November 2018): 149–163.
- 2021
- Working Paper
Population Interference in Panel Experiments
By: Iavor I Bojinov, Kevin Wu Han and Guillaume Basse
The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit's outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population interference in... View Details
Bojinov, Iavor I., Kevin Wu Han, and Guillaume Basse. "Population Interference in Panel Experiments." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-100, March 2021.
- May 2021
- Article
Ideology and Composition Among an Online Crowd: Evidence From Wikipedians
By: Shane Greenstein, Grace Gu and Feng Zhu
Online communities bring together participants from diverse backgrounds and often face challenges in aggregating their opinions. We infer lessons from the experience of individual contributors to Wikipedia articles about U.S. politics. We identify two factors that... View Details
Keywords: User Segregation; Online Community; Contested Knowledge; Collective Intelligence; Ideology; Bias; Wikipedia; Knowledge Sharing; Perspective; Government and Politics
Greenstein, Shane, Grace Gu, and Feng Zhu. "Ideology and Composition Among an Online Crowd: Evidence From Wikipedians." Management Science 67, no. 5 (May 2021): 3067–3086.
- 2020
- Article
Mutual Funds: Skill and Performance
By: Jonathan B. Berk, Jules van Binsbergen and Max Miller
The authors summarize the recent literature on mutual fund manager skill and performance. They discuss the latest contributions in the field and reinterpret them through the lens of the rational expectations framework (efficient market hypothesis). They further discuss... View Details
Keywords: Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Financial Management; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics
Berk, Jonathan B., Jules van Binsbergen, and Max Miller. "Mutual Funds: Skill and Performance." Journal of Portfolio Management 46, no. 5 (2020): 17–31.
- May 2024
- Article
The Effect of Configural Processing on Mentalization
By: Katrina Fincher, Ting Zhang, Asteya Percaya, Adam Galinsky and Michael W. Morris
Eight studies (N = 2,561) reveal that how we perceptually process a person’s face affects our capacity to understand their mind. Studies 1A and B indicate this relationship functions via two separate pathways: (a) indirectly by increasing our sensitivity to the... View Details
Fincher, Katrina, Ting Zhang, Asteya Percaya, Adam Galinsky, and Michael W. Morris. "The Effect of Configural Processing on Mentalization." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 126, no. 5 (May 2024): 758–778.
- Article
Your Visual System Provides All the Information You Need to Make Moral Judgments about Generic Visual Events
By: Julian De Freitas and George A. Alvarez
To what extent are people's moral judgments susceptible to subtle factors of which they are unaware? Here we show that we can change people’s moral judgments outside of their awareness by subtly biasing perceived causality. Specifically, we used subtle visual... View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and George A. Alvarez. "Your Visual System Provides All the Information You Need to Make Moral Judgments about Generic Visual Events." Cognition 178 (September 2018): 133–146.
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Customer Journey as a Source of Information
By: Nicolas Padilla, Eva Ascarza and Oded Netzer
In the face of heightened data privacy concerns and diminishing third-party data access,
firms are placing increased emphasis on first-party data (1PD) for marketing decisions.
However, in environments with infrequent purchases, reliance on past purchases 1PD... View Details
Keywords: Customer Journey; Privacy; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Customer Focus and Relationships
Padilla, Nicolas, Eva Ascarza, and Oded Netzer. "The Customer Journey as a Source of Information." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-035, October 2023. (Revised October 2023.)
- Research Summary
A Temporal View of the Costs and Benefits of Self-Deception
Researchers have documented many cases in which individuals rationalize their regrettable actions. Four experiments examine situations in which participants go beyond merely explaining away their misconduct to actively deceiving themselves. We find that those who... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Consumer Disclosure
By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz and Leslie John
As technological advances enable consumers to share more information in unprecedented ways, today’s disclosure takes on a variety of new forms, triggering a paradigm shift in what “disclosure” entails. This review introduces two factors to conceptualize consumer... View Details
Keywords: Disclosure; Passive Disclosure; Information; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Situation or Environment
Kim, Tami, Kate Barasz, and Leslie John. "Consumer Disclosure." Consumer Psychology Review 4 (2021): 59–69.
Population Interference in Panel Experiments
The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit’s outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population... View Details
- 30 Apr 2019
- First Look
New Research and Ideas, April 30, 2019
inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen option's attribute values (e.g., a candidate's specific stance on a... View Details
Keywords: Dina Gerdeman
- 06 Mar 2018
- First Look
First Look at Research and Ideas, March 6, 2018
likely to make aggressive offers in distributive negotiations than those who interacted with counterparts expressing neutral emotion. In Study 2, we find that inferences of the tendency to forgive mediates the relationship between... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne