Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,705)
- Faculty Publications (230)
- December 2011
- Article
Economics Education and Greed
By: Long Wang, Deepak Malhotra and J. Keith Murnighan
The recent financial crisis, and repeated corporate scandals, raise serious questions about whether a business school education contributes to what some have described as a culture of greed. The dominance of economic-related courses in MBA curricula led us to assess... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
Global Capitalism at Risk: What Are You Doing About It?
Market capitalism, a system that has proven to be a remarkable engine of wealth creation, is poised for a breakdown. That sounds dire, and it is. Increasing income inequality, migration, weaknesses in the global financial system, environmental degradation, and... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications
By: Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich and Michael I. Norton
Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory... View Details
Keywords: Wages; Surveys; Wealth and Poverty; Behavior; Income; Research; Rank and Position; Attitudes; Personal Characteristics; Economics
- 2011
- Working Paper
Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about... View Details
- 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
- June 2011
- Case
Reed Supermarkets: A New Wave of Competitors
By: John A. Quelch and Carole Carlson
Reed Supermarkets is a high-end supermarket chain with operations in several Midwestern states. Meredith Collins, vice president of marketing, visits stores located in Columbus, Ohio, an important region with the largest market and the greatest impact on revenue... View Details
- April 2011 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
BlackRock Solutions
By: Kenneth A. Froot and Scott Waggoner
The BlackRock Solutions case examines the different functions and economics of a global asset manager's value chain, with particular emphasis on the "money management" and the "investment systems platform" businesses. Students analyze why BlackRock decided to unbundle... View Details
Keywords: Investment Management; Strategic Vision; Organizational Behavior; Economies Of Scale And Scope; Unbundling Of Services; Strategic Planning; Risk Management; Financial Management; Asset Management; Competitive Advantage; Value; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Investment; Financial Strategy
- April 2011
- Article
Behavioral Economics Perspectives on Public Sector Pension Plans
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We describe the pension plan features of the states and the largest cities and counties in the U.S. Unlike in the private sector, defined benefit (DB) pensions are still the norm in the public sector. However, a few jurisdictions have shifted towards defined... View Details
- March 2011
- Article
Do Sell-Side Stock Analysts Exhibit Escalation of Commitment?
By: John Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman
This paper presents evidence that when an analyst makes an out-of-consensus forecast of a company's quarterly earnings that turns out to be incorrect, she escalates her commitment to maintaining an out-of-consensus view on the company. Relative to an analyst who was... View Details
- February 2011
- Article
Dividend Taxes and International Portfolio Choice
By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala
This paper investigates how dividend taxes influence portfolio choices, using the response to the distinctive treatment of a subset of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. An open-economy after-tax capital asset... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America
By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
As the main producers of managerial elites, business schools represent strategic research sites for understanding the formation of economic practices and representations. This article draws on historical material to analyze the changing place of economics in American... View Details
- 2011
- Article
Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia
By: Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu
In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between group size and incentives to contribute in the setting of Chinese Wikipedia, the Chinese language version of an online encyclopedia that relies entirely on voluntary contributions. The group at Chinese Wikipedia... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
How Does Simplified Disclosure Affect Individuals' Mutual Fund Choices?
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We use an experiment to estimate the effect of the SEC's Summary Prospectus, which simplifies mutual fund disclosure. Our subjects chose an equity portfolio and a bond portfolio. Subjects received either statutory prospectuses or Summary Prospectuses. We find no... View Details
- Article
Values, Purpose, Meaning, and Expectations: Why Culture and Context Matter
The "rational person" standard, based on assumptions of economic self-interest, has long prevailed in legal reasoning. But understanding of decision making, behavioral choices, and possibilities for action must be enlarged to include a variety of factors that give... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Lawful but Corrupt: Gaming and the Problem of Institutional Corruption in the Private Sector
This paper describes how the gaming of society's rules by corporations contributes to the problem of institutional corruption in the world of business. "Gaming" in its various forms involves the use of technically legal means to subvert the intent of society's rules in... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions
By: Lisa L. Shu and Max Bazerman
We explore interventions at the individual level and focus on recognized cognitive barriers from behavioral decision-making literature. In particular, we highlight three cognitive barriers that impede sound individual decision making that have particular relevance to... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-interested Charitable Behavior
By: L. Anik, L. B. Aknin, M. I. Norton and E. W. Dunn
While lay intuitions and pop psychology suggest that helping others leads to higher levels of happiness, the existing evidence only weakly supports this causal claim: research in psychology, economics, and neuroscience exploring the benefits of charitable giving has... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time-series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details
- March – April 2010
- Article
The Need for Ideological Consciousness
By: George C. Lodge
Every so often in American history a crisis comes along that requires Americans to inspect cherished assumptions and to act in a way that many find ideologically repulsive. Although our leaders insist that such actions are pragmatic-the only sensible way to deal with... View Details
- 2010
- Other Unpublished Work
God, Government and Outsiders: The Influence of Religious Beliefs on Depositor Behavior in an Emerging Market.
By: Ayesha K. Khan and Tarun Khanna
This paper provides evidence that religious beliefs can have a significant impact on individual financial choices. Using proprietary panel data on the distribution of bank deposits across all commercial banks in Pakistan over a 33-month period, I find that Islamic... View Details