Publications

Research Summary

Cost Management and Management Control Systems in Hospitals

By: V.G. Narayanan

Hospitals tend not to have very good cost accounting and control systems. More broadly, there is enormous opportunity for managing costs and aligning incentives in the health care industry. I am studying how cost accounting methods can be used to... View Details

2014
Article

Expectations of Returns and Expected Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Andrei Shleifer

We analyze time-series of investor expectations of future stock market returns from six data sources between 1963 and 2011. The six measures of expectations are highly positively correlated with each other, as well as with past stock returns and with the level of the... View Details

Keywords: Performance Expectations; Investment Return

2010
Chapter

Lessons from Catastrophe Reinsurance

By: Kenneth A. Froot

Of the 20 most costly catastrophes since 1970, more than half have occurred since 2001. Is this an omen of what the 21st century will be? How might we behave in this new, uncertain, and more dangerous environment? Will our actions be rational or irrational? A select... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Insurance; Risk and Uncertainty; Natural Disasters; Behavior

2013
Chapter

Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Current Survey

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We survey the theory and evidence of behavioral corporate finance, which generally takes one of two approaches. The market timing and catering approach views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational managerial responses to securities mispricing. The... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Roles; Theory; Corporate Finance; Financial Management; Investment; Market Timing; Behavioral Finance; Prejudice and Bias; Economics; Forecasting and Prediction

28 Jun 2010
HBS Case

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

percentile. "A key takeaway for students is the power of transparency as a mechanism for change," says Tucker. "Another is the motivational value of benchmarking themselves to an internal standard of zero accidents instead of View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

December 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Managing a Public Image: Kevin Knight

By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas

Kevin Knight recounts an uncomfortable situation he faced as an African-American student at Harvard Business School. Concerned with maintaining an image as a calm and rational person, he is appalled when he finds himself in a heated classroom exchange in defense of an... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Ethnicity; Identity; Competency and Skills; Business Education

Educators

In this chapter, we survey the theory and evidence of behavioral corporate finance, which generally takes one of two approaches. The market timing and catering approach views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational managerial responses to... View Details

2016
Other Teaching and Training Material

Organizational Behavior Reading: Decision Making

By: Francesca Gino, Max Bazerman and Katherine Shonk

This Reading argues that decision making is systematically flawed and introduces methods to improve decision-making effectiveness. The Essential Reading section covers the rational decision-making model and three important ideas that challenge it: Herbert Simon's... View Details

Keywords: Game Theory; Decision Making

January 2011 (Revised January 2012)
Supplement

The Case of the Unidentified Healthcare Companies2010 (CW)

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer, Ethan S Bernstein, Margarita Krivitski and Srinidhi Reddy

This case presents financial statements and selected rations for 14 unidentified healthcare organizations and asks that each set of financial information be matched with one of the following healthcare companies: a biotechnology firm, a community nursing company, a... View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Financial Management; Health Care and Treatment; Biotechnology Industry; Health Industry

Research Summary

Epistemic Conditions for Iterated Admissibility (with H. Jerome Keisler)

Iterated weak dominance, also called iterated admissibility (IA), has long been known as a powerful but conceptually puzzling solution concept. We give an epistemic foundation for IA. That is, we give conditions on the rationality of the players in the game, on what... View Details

June 2001
Case

GE's Early Dispute Resolution Initiative (A)

By: Michael A. Wheeler and Gillian Morris

GE's chief litigation counsel sought to rationalize litigation flow by viewing it as a manufacturing process. By applying the principles of Six Sigma, P.D. Villareal created an Early Dispute Resolution (EDR) system that enabled both lawyers and managers to work... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Lawsuits and Litigation; Six Sigma; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges; Conflict and Resolution; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; United States

Educators

March 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Lehigh Steel

By: V.G. Narayanan and Laura Donohue

Lehigh Steel is a specialty steel manufacturer that plummeted from record profits to record losses in less than three years, driven by an inability to distinguish between profitable and unprofitable business. The scale and growth of service activities and overhead... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Product; Cost; Activity Based Costing and Management; Profit; Accounting; Corporate Finance; Steel Industry

Educators

1997
Dictionary Entry

Incommensurable Values

By: Nien-he Hsieh

Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure. The possibility of value incommensurability is thought to raise deep questions about practical reason and rational choice... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Values and Beliefs

14 Sep 2018
News

Best Credit Cards: Ask the Experts

26 Nov 2019
News

Who Killed Healthcare? Dr Regina Herzlinger Knows Who’s Guilty

July 2015
Article

A Behavioral Model of the Popularity and Regulation of Demandable Liabilities

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

Overoptimism regarding one's ability to arrive early in a queue is shown to rationalize deposit contracts in which people can withdraw their funds on demand even if consumption takes place later. Capitalized institutions serving overoptimistic depositors emerge in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Banks and Banking

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