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2020
Working Paper

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Robust Optimization; Taxation; Income; Policy; Design

05 Dec 2018
Working Paper Summaries

The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information

Keywords: by Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

March–April 2022
Article

School Choice in Chile

By: Jose Correa, Natalie Epstein, Rafael Epstein, Juan Escobar, Ignacio Rios, Nicolas Aramayo, Bastian Bahamondes, Carlos Bonet, Martin Castillo, Andres Cristi, Boris Epstein and Felipe Subiabre

Centralized school admission mechanisms are an attractive way of improving social welfare and fairness in large educational systems. In this paper, we report the design and implementation of the newly established school choice system in Chile, where over 274,000... View Details

Keywords: Early Childhood Education; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Family and Family Relationships; Welfare; Chile

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2021
Article

To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law

By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate... View Details

Keywords: Personalized Law; Regulation; Regulatory Avoidance; Regulatory Arbitrage; Law And Economics; Law And Technology; Law And Artificial Intelligence; Futurism; Moral Hazard; Elicitation; Signaling; Privacy; Law; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning

SSRN

August 28, 2018
Article

Maintaining Trust When Agents Can Engage in Self-deception

By: Andres Babino, Hernan A. Makse, Rafael Di Tella and Mariano Sigman

The coexistence of cooperation and selfish instincts is a remarkable characteristic of humans. Psychological research has unveiled the cognitive mechanisms behind self-deception. Two important findings are that a higher ambiguity about others’ social preferences leads... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Cognitive Neuroscience; Corruption; Cooperation; Self-deception; Trust; Behavior

May 2007
Article

Managing Your Boss

By: John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter

The best way to make a major impact in your organization? Forge a strong relationship with your boss. You'll get the support and resources you need to put your great ideas into action. But "managing up" isn't easy. For example, if you're reporting to a new CEO, you... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Relationships; Value; Behavior; Communication; Decisions

Article

Valuing Time Over Money Is Associated with Greater Happiness

By: A.V. Whillans, Aaron C. Weidman and Elizabeth W. Dunn

How do the trade-offs that we make about two of our most valuable resources—time and money—shape happiness? While past research has documented the immediate consequences of thinking about time and money, research has not yet examined whether people’s general... View Details

Keywords: Well-being; Time; Trade-offs; Orientations; Happiness; Money; Satisfaction

Research Summary

Formulating technology commercialization strategies

Even if young organizations succeed in acquiring the specialized talent necessary to further develop a recently-discovered technology, they may face an uncertain path in commercializing the original invention. Initial conceptions of what might constitute a useful... View Details

Article

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Management Systems; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Motivation and Incentives; Decision Making; Business Model

April 2014
Article

Botsourcing and Outsourcing: Robot, British, Chinese, and German Workers Are for Thinking—Not Feeling—Jobs

By: Adam Waytz and Michael I. Norton

Technological innovations have produced robots capable of jobs that, until recently, only humans could perform. The present research explores the psychology of "botsourcing"—the replacement of human jobs by robots—while examining how understanding botsourcing can... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Emotions; Cognition and Thinking

Article

If You're Going to Do Wrong, at Least Do It Right: Considering Two Moral Dilemmas at the Same Time Promotes Moral Consistency

By: Netta Barak-Corren, Chia-Jung Tsay, Fiery Cushman and Max Bazerman

We study how people reconcile conflicting moral intuitions by juxtaposing two versions of classic moral problems: the trolley problem and the footbridge problem. When viewed separately, most people favor action in the former and disapprove of action in the latter,... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Problems and Challenges; Conflict and Resolution

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February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Mistry Architects (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Robert G. Eccles and Mona Sinha

Describes an architecture firm founded and run by a husband and wife team, Sharukh and Renu Mistry, that emphasizes "green" building. The firm presents an unusual mix of projects-spanning the spectrum from larger corporate projects to small private homes. The mix also... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Customer Focus and Relationships; Design; Housing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Community Relations; Environmental Sustainability; Nonprofit Organizations; Conflict and Resolution

Educators

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2022
Working Paper

Control and Fairness: What Determines Elected Local Leaders’ Support for Hosting Refugees in Their Community?

By: Kristin Fabbe, Eleni Kyrkopoulou, Konstantinos Matakos and Aslı Unan

When it comes to successful refugee reception the local level matters. Research overwhelmingly examines host communities' attitudes, but endorsement from local politicians is equally important to resolving conflicts and facilitating harmonious interaction. Yet, the... View Details

Keywords: Values; Control; Refugee Resettlement; Local Elites; Contact; Fair-share; Conjoint Experiment; Refugees; Integration; Local Range; Leadership; Attitudes; Fairness

June 2021
Article

The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Christine L. Exley and Muriel Niederle

While there is ample evidence of discrimination against women in the workplace, it can be difficult to understand what factors contribute to discriminatory behavior. We use an experiment to both document discrimination and unpack its sources. First, we show that, on... View Details

Keywords: Gender Discrimination; Behavioral Decision Making; Gender; Attitudes; Prejudice and Bias; Economics; Behavior; Decision Making